VICTORIOUS 

A  Novel 


By 
REGINALD  WRIGHT  KAUFFMAN 


AUTHOR  OF 


THE  HOUSE  OF  BONDAGE 

OUR  NAVY  AT  WORK 

ETC.,  ETC. 


He  Who  Gives  All  Gams  All 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I    The  Overture 


II  IB  Which  the  Memory  of  an  Old  Love  Plays  Havoc 
with  a  New;  Cries  "Place  a  la  Jeunesse!";  and 
Makes  Mention  of  a  Vision  of  Jeanne  d'Arc  .  19 

III    How  Andy  Entered  Dangers  Beyond  the  Danger- 

Zone;  and  of  a  Pace  at  a  Car-Window     ...       49 

IT  Of  a  Gracious  Grafter;  of  a  French  Maid  and  a 
Drafted  Pro-German,  and  of  Two  Persons  Un 
der  a  Parisian  Moon;  Yet,  Withal,  of  the  Order 
and  Disorder  of  War  ........  64 

T  Tells  of  a  Little  Town  that  Goes  to  War;  of  a 
Woman  with  a  Red  Cross;  of  a  Girl  with  China- 
Blue  Eyes,  and  of  a  Mother  that  Did  Not  Have 
a  Service-Star  ...........  _  85 

VI    Takes  Andy  Brown  to  the  Trenches;  Pursues  Love, 

and  Pledges  Faith  to  a  High  but  Difficult  Cause      96 

VII  Concerns  Some  Experiences,  Psychological  as  Well 
as  Physical,  of  a  Conscientious  Objector;  and 
Tells  a  Good  Deal  About  Democracy  in  the  Dol 
drums  .............  113 

VIII    Devoutly  Devoted  to  Trouble     .......    133 

IX    Of  Sarah  Brown,  and  of  a  Yellow  Letter  Found  in 

a  Trunk       ............     145 

X    Hats  Off;  The  Flag!    ..........     151 

XI    How  Politicians  Can  Eat  Their  Cake  and  Have  It    161 
XII    Chrissly  Hears  the  Nearer  Waters  Roll    ...     178 

XIII  A  Short  One,  Showing,  However,  that  France  Is  Not 
the  Only  Place  Where  Fate  Gathers  Threads 
for  Her  Intricate  Web  .....  187 


CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTEE  PAGE 

XIV  Showing,  Among  Divers  Startling  Matters  of  Im 
port  to  Andrew  Blunston,  One  that  Should  Long 
Be  of  Import  to  All  His  Fellow-Countrymen;  To 
Wit,  the  Early  American  Front 193 

XV    Wherein  the  Dragon  Swallows  the  Sun    ....     217 
XVI    Treats  of  Love  Among  the  Ruins 221 

XVII  Proves  that  Gratitude  May  Warm  the  Barest 
Bosoms,  and  Gives  One  Recipe  for  a  Commis 
sion  in  the  Censorship  237 

XVIII    Presenting  Sylvia  Raeburn  in  a  New  Role     .     .    248 

XIX    How  Miss  Hattie  Discovered  a  Little,  and  Chrissly 

Lost  a  Great  Deal 260 

XX    But  What  About  Andy? 269 

XXI    Recording  Two  Highly  Emotional  Experiences    .     280 

XXII  Containing  Some  Adventures  of  a  Pupil  in  the 
School  of  War  and  Showing  How  Le*onie  Did 
Not  Wait  in  Vain,  and  How  Andy  Found  His 
'Soul 291 

XXIII  Sarah  Brown  Hears  News  of  Herself  and  of  Her 

Son 320 

XXIV  In  Which  "My  Lord  Fighteth  the  Battles  of  the 

Lord" 328 

XXV    How  Andy  Went  "Over  the  Top" S43 

XXVI    Just  a  Chapter  To  Be  Skipped  by  Everybody  that 

Doesn't  Care  About  Love 350 

XXVII    How  Chrissly  Came  to  Mirande-la-Faloise,  and  How 

Andy  Stayed  There 367 

XXVIII    Of  the  Glory  of  the  Stars,  and  of  How  "One  Star 

Differeth  from  Another  Star  in  Glory"     .     .     .     391 


VICTORIOUS 


VICTORIOUS 


CHAPTEE  I 

THE  OVERTURE 

ON  THE  second  of  April,  1917,  among  the  multitude  of 
events,  portentous  and  minor,  taking  place  in  the  experience 
of  the  world's  people,  the  following  occurred  in  the  lives  of 
those  persons  with  whom  this  chronicle  is  chiefly  concerned : 

At  5 :36  A.  M.,  a  mature  alarm-clock,  which  lost  six  minutes 
every  night,  broke  the  stillness  that  had,  for  seven  hours  and 
more,  prevailed  in  Sarah  Brown's  bedroom.  Mrs.  Brown 
awoke  instantly,  but  she  did  not  instantly  get  up.  Hers  was 
a  small  town,  and  the  citizens  of  small  towns  are  early  risers, 
but  her  hours  out  of  bed  were  so  long  and  so  wearisome  that 
she  had  no  inclination  to  lengthen  them.  So  she  lay  there, 
pretending  to  herself  that  she  had  better  begin  the  day  by 
planning  what  she  was  to  do,  although  aware  that  what  she 
would  have  to  do  would  be  only  what  she  had  done  daily  for 
many  years. 

She  sat  up  at  last,  however,  and  walked,  barefoot,  a  tall 
thin  figure  that  patently  had  once  been  pleasing,  to  the  1870 
bureau.  A  lamp  stood  there,  and  she  lit  it. 

For  her  inattentive  gaze  the  mirror  presented  a  dark- 
browed,  sallow  face,  rather  sunken  and  deeply  lined,  under 
plentiful  hair  of  black  and  silver.  Her  features  were  still 
handsome,  though  their  expression  was  one,  not  of  present 
strength,  but  of  strength  that  had  been  and  was  departed. 

She  dressed  mechanically  and  stole  softly  down  the  stairs 
in  her  slippers  and  out  to  the  kitchen,  where  she  set  the  kettle 


2  VICTORIOUS 

to  boiling  over  the  gas  stove.  Then  she  went  to  the  hall  and 
called  irp  to  tuo  third  f.oor: 

"An-n-n-^  !K 

There  was  no  answer. 

"Andy  I"  called  Mrs.  Brown. 

Prom  somewhere  aloft,  a  sleepy  "Yes,  mother"  replied. 

Mrs.  Brown  opened  the  windows  of  the  dining-room.  The 
rumor  of  the  frogs  had  hardly  ceased  along  the  river,  but, 
borne  on  the  inrush  of  spring  air,  there  came  the  quick 
clucking  call  of  house-hunting  robins.  The  fluttering  window- 
curtains  were  of  a  cheap  lace,  and  on  the  sills  stood  tomato- 
cans  covered  with  crepe-paper  and  bearing  red  geraniums; 
the  curtains  needed  washing,  but  the  coal-dust  from  the  heavy 
freight  traffic  somewhat  excused  that.  Of  late  years,  Mrs. 
Brown's  chief  method  of  lightening  household  cares  had  lain 
in  postponing  them;  since  it  was  only  meals  that  could  not 
well  be  postponed,  she  confined  herself  just  now  to  breakfast, 
and  to  hurrying  her  son,  whose  late  hours  with  his  books  made 
him  dilatory  in  the  mornings. 

"You'll  be  late  at  the  office,"  she  called  again. 

"I  am  getting  up,  mother." 

"Then  let  me  hear  you  moving!" 

From  the  attic  bedroom  came  a  double  thump. 

"You're  just  lying  in  bed  and  pounding  your  shoes  on  the 
floor!"  called  Mrs.  Brown. 

It  was  rather  a  game  between  them,  that  thumping,  though 
neither  openly  admitted  it.  However  grown-up  he  must  be 
during  the  rest  of  the  day,  Andy  was  his  mother's  little 
boy  for  those  few  minutes  each  morning,  and  she  was  not  un 
happily  aware  of  it.  Now,  the  matutinal  game  ended,  a  dim 
head  thrust  itself  over  the  top  of  the  stair-well. 

"Don't  you  believe  me  ?"  it  asked. 

"Yes,"  said  Sarah  reluctantly.  "But  you're  not  dressed. 
You'd  better  hurry :  the  eggs  are  on." 

A  moment  later,  she  had  further  evidence  of  her  son's 
awakening:  all  the  way  down-stairs  floated  the  music  of  his 
resonant  voice.  He  was  singing  It's  a  Long  Way  to  Tipperary 
while  he  searched  under  the  bed  for  a  lost  collar-button. 


VICTOKIOUS  3 

The  eggs  were  not  "on,"  but  Mrs.  Brown  put  them  there. 

This  gave  her  a  moment  of  leisure.  She  opened  the  front 
door  and  went  out  upon  the  small  square  porch. 

A  girl  was  sauntering  down  the  street,  a  blonde  girl  with  a 
plump  pert  face.  Hooked  over  her  arm  was  an  empty  basket 
that  swayed  as  she  walked.  Her  bright  blue  eyes  laughed  at 
Sarah  Brown,  to  whom  she  said  "Good  morning." 

"Going  to  market?"  she  added. 

No,  Mrs.  Brown  was  not  going  to  market ;  she  had  "got  her 
things  up  street  last  night,"  but: 

"Will  you  be  in  time,  Minnie  ?"  asked  Andy's  mother. 

"I  guess  not,"  said  Minnie;  "I  never  am.  Still,  we  get 
nearly  everything  at  the  Shuman's  stall,  and  Chrissly  Shu- 
man  always  saves  them  for  me." 

II 

Minnie  went  on  to  the  market-house.  That  big  building 
with  the  bowed  roof  was  still  crowded  by  townspeople,  gentle 
and  considerate  enough  in  most  of  the  occupations  of  life,  but 
now  jostling  one  another  before  the  heavily  laden  stalls  behind 
which  Amishmen  in  shovel-hats  and  Mennonite-women  in 
black  poke-bonnets  stood  to  sell  the  produce  of  their  uberous 
farms. 

Through  a  score  of  greetings,  Minnie  edged  her  way  toward 
the  most  fecund  stall  in  the  market-house.  It  bent  under 
piles  of  tempting  food  methodically  arranged,  and  it  recoiled 
from  the  concerted  onslaught  of  a  phalanx  of  the  town's  best 
people.  Back  of  it  stood,  selling  his  wares,  an  imperturbable 
Amishman  in  his  brown  homespun,  large,  bearded,  his  hair 
flowing  free  to  the  nape  of  his  neck  and  then  cut  with  square 
severity.  A  buxom,  bonneted  wife,  her  ample  bosom  covered 
by  a  sober  kerchief,  assisted  him,  and,  at  one  corner,  their 
broad-shouldered  boy,  the  adolescent  replica  of  his  father,  red- 
cheeked,  smiling,  served  still  other  customers  and  looked  with 
dark  expectant  eyes  beyond  the  buyers. 

Minnie  leaned  against  a  neighboring  stall  until  a  moment 
when  the  Amishman  and  his  wife  were  entangled  in  the  hag- 


'4  VICTORIOUS 

gling  of  a  local  bank-president.  Then  she  promptly  ap 
proached  the  boy. 

"Hello,  Chrissly,"  she  said. 

Chrissly  dropped  a  cabbage  that  was  on  its  way  to  the  out 
stretched  hands  of  Colonel  Eskessen,  owner  and  editor  of  the 
Americus  Daily  Spy.  In  the  boy's  eyes,  expectancy  became 
realization;  his  broad  grin  showed  twin  rows  of  white  and 
even  teeth.  At  first  he  could  not  speak;  he  could  only  bob 
his  head. 

"How  do  you  feel  about  the  Germans  now  ?"  asked  Minnie. 

The  grin  faded. 

"Ok,"  said  Chrissly,  "the  Germans  is  all  right.  Mind  what 
I  tol'  you  las'  market  a'ready  ?  What  f er  have  we  to  mix  in 
an'  pick  on  'em?"  The  red  in  his  cheeks  deepened.  "An' 
now  the  pressident  is  goin'  afore  Conkress,  they  says,  an' 
talk  some  more  still.  Des  isli  alle  letz — I  mean,  that's  all 
wrong  yet."  He  stumbled  between  his  two  idioms,  and  then 
his  emotion  tripped  him  into  the  jungle  of  his  native  Pennsyl 
vania-Dutch.  "Die  prerogative  powers  fom  pressident — " 

"That's  all  right,"  laughed  Minnie.  "I  guess  nobody's  go 
ing  to  get  hurt.  Got  my  tilings  I  told  you  last  market  I'd 
want?" 

Chrissly  returned  to  his  form  of  English,  and  to  radiance. 

"All  but  that  chicken/'  he  said.    "The  chickens  is  all  gone." 

Colonel  Eskessen  was  prodding  a  lump  of  butter  with  a  fore 
finger.  He  conveyed  the  forefinger  to  his  mouth ;  but  he  eyed 
Minnie  restively. 

"Gone?    The  chickens  all  gone?"  gasped  Minnie. 

"I  couldn't  help  it,"  pleaded  the  now  discomfited  Chrissly. 
"My  pappy  sold  'em  when  I  wasn't  lookin'."  Minnie  was  pout 
ing.  "But  I  saved  a  duck  fer  you  still,"  said  Chrissly. 

Colonel  Eskessen  was  abstractedly  eating  dried-beef  from  a 
pile  on  the  stall  and  glowering  at  the  unheeding  girl.  Chrissly 
proceeded  to  fill  her  basket  with  food  that,  contrary  to  the 
market-rules  against  reservations,  he  had  retained  for  her. 


VICTORIOUS 


Out  of  "the  Browns'  house,"  having  breakfasted,  came 
Andy.  He  was  just  a  lank  freckled  lad,  with  a  cheerful  face, 
and  he  was  clad  in  all  the  effulgence  of  a  small  town's  "swell 
dresser";  there  were  boys  exactly  like  him,  that  morning,  in 
hundreds  of  towns  throughout  the  United  States,  at  first 
glance  in  no  wise  remarkable;  and  yet,  about  him  as  about 
them,  there  was  that  which  commanded  confidence  and  won 
affection.  Perhaps,  in  Andy,  it  was  the  frankness  of  his  really 
fine  brown  eyes,  or  the  earnestness  and  enthusiasm  of  the  light 
that,  issuing  thence,  enfolded  him  as  with  an  aura  of  idealism. 
Perhaps  it  was  his  innocence  and  that  lack  of  humor  which 
can  exist,  in  one  of  our  people,  by  the  very  side  of  a  full 
share  of  the  American  sense  of  fun.  He  radiated  energy  and 
good  will.  He  obviously  gave,  and  he  obviously  so  expected  a 
fair  return  that  he  never  dreamed  the  need  of  demanding  it. 

People  coming  from  market  smiled  back  at  him.  When  he 
turned  into  Elm  Avenue,  which  is  the  main  street  of  the  town, 
the  girls  at  the  "Fashion  Emporium"  and  the  "Racket  Store/' 
who  went  to  work  early,  called  "Hello" ;  so  did  the  employees 
on  their  way  to  the  silk-mill  and  the  umbrella-factory  and  the 
shirt-factory,  and  the  proprietor  of  the  "Philadelphia  Shoe 
Store"  crossed  the  street  to  "give  him  an  item." 

Andy,  on  his  way  along  Second  Street,  had  passed  the  old 
stone  Blunston  house,  an  ivied  relic  of  colonial  times,  shut  up 
now  these  several  years,  and  was  wondering  whether  its  appar 
ent  changelessness  was  symbolic  of  the  town.  Somebody  had 
said  so.  Somebody  had  said  —  it  must  have  been  Lawyer 
Dickey — that  in  Americus,  save  for  the  temperature,  which 
was  never  the  same  for  twenty-four  hours  on  end,  each  day 
was  like  its  predecessor,  and  Colonel  Eskessen  had  supple 
mented:  "But  none  of  them  unpleasant."  Andy  saw  both 
points  but  didn't  wholly  agree  with  the  former.  He  might 
have  admitted  that  its  atmosphere  of  contentment  was  the 
salient  quality  of  this  town  rising  from  the  silver  river  and 
surrounded  by  high  and  gentle  hills ;  but  he  would  have  pro- 


6  VICTORIOUS 

tested — "he  protested  now  to  himself,  as  he  walked  whistling, 
officeward — that  he  found  variety  here. 

Of  course,  there  was  not  much  variation  in  the  routine  of  a 
Daily  Spy  reporter.  He  knew  just  what,  within  certain  well 
defined  limits,  this  morning  and  the  afternoon  would  bring 
forth:  he  would  report  to  Colonel  Eskessen;  glance  at  the 
Philadelphia  papers  to  see  whether  President  Wilson  really 
meant  to  say  anything  decisive  in  his  heralded  appearance  be 
fore  Congress;  ask  the  copy-boy  to  save  him  the  New  York 
World  when  it  came  in  on  the  ten-thirty  train,  so  that  he 
shouldn't  miss  Owen  Evans'  Paris  dispatches;  and  then  he 
would  go  on  his  route  about  town  seeking  the  local  news.  He 
would  write  that,  or  his  share  of  it — the  same  sort  of  news 
that  he  always  wrote — would  go  home  to  midday  dinner,  come 
back,  and  read  proof  and  go  home  again,  this  time  to  supper. 
But  there  was  always  the  evening.  Last  evening  there  had 
been  a  party  at  the  Kellers',  and  to-night,  in  the  Armory,  the 
Four-Leaf  Social  was  going  to  give  a  dance. 

He  had  passed  from  these  thoughts  and  was  wondering 
whether  "we'll  get  into  the  war,"  and  cheerily  trusting  that 
we  might,  when,  looking  up,  he  saw  Minnie  Taylor  coming 
toward  him,  her  full  market-basket  on  her  arm.  He  flushed  a 
little  and  touched  his  pale  blue  necktie,  to  make  sure  that  it 
was  just  where  it  ought  to  be :  one  night  he  had  had  a  horrible 
nightmare;  he  dreamed  that  he  was  going  to  the  office  and 
met  Minnie  and  found  he  had  no  necktie  on. 

Minnie  and  Andy  were  of  the  same  age :  it  was  that  age  at 
which  the  girl  is  so  much  older  than  the  boy.  Minnie  saw 
Andy  approaching,  though  she  pretended  not  to,  just  as  he 
saw  her  and  pretended  he  didn't;  but  Minnie  gave  no  furtive 
touches  to  her  person  or  apparel :  she  knew  that  she  was  right. 

"Hello,"  she  said. 

Andy  said:  "Hello."  He  looked  at  the  basket  and  put  a 
wholly  unnecessary  question:  "Been  to  market?" 

"Yes.    Where'd  you  think?" 

"The  North  Pole.  Wish  I  could  carry  that  for  you,  but 
I've  got  to  hurry  to  the  office." 

"You  always  do  have  to.    And  it's  heavy  to-day,  too."    She 


VICTOKIOUS  7 

let  her  eyes  meet  his.  "Chrissly  Shuman  gives  me  good  meas 
ure." 

In  the  language  of  the  town,  Andy  was  "going  with"  Min 
nie;  that  is  the  way  that  Americus  described  the  beginnings 
of  courtships.  Andy  had  never  seen  Chrissly,  whose  father 
had  only  recently  deserted  the  Doncaster  market  for  that  in 
Americus,  and  Minnie  knew  this.  If,  however,  she  wanted  to 
waken  any  jealousy  in  the  heart  of  her  admirer,  she  failed. 

"Be  sure  you're  on  time  for  the  dance  to-night,"  he  said. 
"Fll  come  round  at  half-past  seven." 

Minnie  thought  that  too  early. 

"Well,"  said  Andy,  "maybe  there  won't  be  many  more 
dances." 

"Why  not?" 

"Perhaps  we're  going  to  get  into  this  war."  (Andy  Hoped 
we  were  going  to  get  into  the  war,  but  he  didn't  think  so.)  He 
spoke  only  because  the  conjecture  struck  him  as  one  that  it 
was  manly  to  utter. 

"I  don't  see  what  that's  got  to  do  with  dances,"  said  Minnie. 
She  turned  up  her  little  nose.  "Besides,  we're  not  going  to 
get  into  it.  Everybody  says  so.  War?  We  should  worry." 

She  gave  him  a  sprig  of  trailing-arbutus  that  Chrissly  Shu 
man  had  given  her. 

So  Andy  went  whistling  to  the  Spy  office,  reported  to  Col 
onel  Eskessen,  glanced  at  the  Philadelphia  newspapers,  decided 
that  nothing  tremendous  was  going  to  happen,  reserved  the 
New  York  World  against  his  return  and  started  on  his  route. 
All  was  just  as  it  had  been  since  he  first  "went  on"  the  Spy; 
all  was  just  as  he  had  known  it  would  be ;  as  far  as  work  was 
concerned,  all  would  go  on  just  this  way  forever.  War?  He 
looked  at  the  smiling  people  on  Elm  Avenue,  at  the  busy  shops, 
at  the  quiet  dwelling-houses  that  lined  the  side-streets;  he 
looked  across  the  shining  river  at  the  peaceful  hilltop  fields 
hedged  about  with  forests  of  pine:  soon  the  spring  wheat 
would  be  green  there,  and  then  soon  it  would  be  yellow;  a 
little  while  and  it  would  be  harvested  and  sent  on  its  long  way 
to  feed  the  European  participants  in  battle.  But  that  would 
be,  as  it  had  been,  America's  only  part  in  Armageddon.  He 


8  VICTOKIOUS 

wished  it  were  not  so,  but  so  it  would  be.    War?    Minnie's 
irony  was  right :  we  should  worry ! 

IV 

Colonel  Kai  Eskessen,  however,  being  an  older  man,  and  an 
older  newspaper-man,  than  Andy,  was  wont  to  read  the 
news  with  another  sort  of  eye.  To-day,  after  he  had  started 
Andy  and  Kepler,  the  senior  reporter,  on  their  rounds,  the 
colonel,  in  his  cluttered  office,  did  first  follow  his  custom 
of  clipping  and  pasting  editorials  from  the  Philadelphia  jour 
nals  and  of  sending  them  to  the  composing-room  to  be  placed, 
uncredited,  in  the  editorial  column  of  that  evening's  Spy,  but 
when  he  then  turned,  also  as  usual,  to  their  first  pages  to  look 
over  the  important  news  of  the  day,  he  perused  the  reports 
from  Washington  with  a  face  that  grew  grave  and  graver. 

The  colonel  was  a  short  shambling  man.  He  had  pale  eyes 
with  a  good-humored  twinkle  in  them  and  a  head  quite  bald 
in  its  curiously  square  top,  across  which  he  carefully  brushed 
the  scanty,  neutral-colored  locks  released  for  such  service  by 
a  part  low  over  his  left  ear.  His  coat  was  never  without  its 
G-.  A.  E.  button  and,  although  in  excellent  health  and  the 
owner  of  a  prosperous  newspaper,  he  drew  a  comfortable  Civil 
War  pension.  The  farmers  at  the  semi-weekly  market  ob 
jected,  behind  his  back,  to  his  custom  of  making  his  breakfast 
by  sampling  their  wares,  and  his  political  opponents,  for  he 
dabbled  in  politics,  said  that  he  had  no  journalistic  backbone 
— they  declared  that  the  Spy's  motto  was  "All  the  news  it's 
safe  to  print" — but  he  was  a  good  husband  and  a  kindly  man ; 
he  understood  the  difficult  art  of  small-town  journalism,  and, 
if  he  suppressed  more  interesting  facts  than  he  printed,  his 
reticences  were  to  conceal  faults,  never  to  withhold  praise, 
and  they  kept  him  friends  with  four-fifths  of  the  town. 

The  colonel  had  served  through  one  war,  and  lived  through 
another.  He  knew  what  a  war  was,  and  he  did  not  want  his 
country  to  enter  one,  if  entrance  could  be  avoided  honorably. 
Life  had  become  neat  and  comfortable;  things  had  seemed 
fixed — and  in  his  particular  case,  as  in  the  case  of  most  of  his 


VICTOKIOUS  9 

friends,  the  source  of  this  well-being  was  a  slowly  and  peace 
fully  evolved  body  of  investments  that  war  would  almost  cer 
tainly  calcitrate. 

He  turned  to  the  financial  pages  and  the  stock-reports.  Al 
ready  there  were  signs  of  uneasiness. 

The  colonel  called  the  copy-boy. 

"If  anybody  comes  in,  Bud,"  he  said,  "tell  'em  I've  gone 
next  door  to  Lawyer  Dickey's  on  business  and  I'll  be  back  in 
ten  minutes." 

He  went  into  the  ground-floor  room  of  the  building  next 
beyond  his  own.  It  had  been  intended  for  a  shop,  but  Lawyer 
Dickey  had  always  used  it  as  his  office. 

"Jim,"  said  the  colonel,  "I  thought  I'd  just  drop  in  to  see 
you  about  collecting  those  unpaid  subscriptions,  but  I  must 
have  left  the  list  on  my  desk.  I  don't  seem  to  have  it 
about  me." 

He  did  not  offer  to  go  back  to  get  the  list.  Every  day  Col 
onel  Eskessen  came  in  for  a  ten-minutes'  chat  with  his  life 
long  friend,  which  lasted  for  at  least  half  an  hour,  and  every 
day  he  made  some  such  excuse  as  the  unpaid  subscriptions 
for  visiting  in  business-hours.  The  subscriptions  were  never 
collected ;  the  colonel  did  not  want  them  collected ;  they  were 
those  of  old  friends  that,  he  knew,  could  neither  afford  to  be 
without  the  paper  nor  yet  to  pay  for  it. 

Dickey  was  the  colonel's  antithesis.  He  was  big  and  ag 
gressive;  he  looked  like  Daniel  Webster  in  his  old  age. 
He  swore  like  a  sailor  and  said  "Now  I  Lay  Me"  every  night 
before  he  got  into  bed ;  when  Lawyer  Dickey  had  won  a  suit 
for  the  Pennsylvania  Kailroad  by  proving  contributory  negli 
gence  on  the  part  of  the  legless,  damage-claiming  employee, 
and  by  thundering  that  the  fellow  had  been  drunk  while  on 
duty,  Jim  Dickey  would  make  a  special  trip  to  Philadelphia — 
on  a  pass,  to  be  sure — and  see  that  the  losing  suiter  was  pen 
sioned. 

"Sit  down,  Kai,"  said  Dickey.  "Still  afraid  we're  going 
to  war?" 

The  colonel  sighed. 

"It  looks  that  way,"  said  he. 


10  VICTORIOUS 

"Not  on  your  life,"  said  Dickey.  "That'd  be  something  def 
inite,  and  anything  definite's  as  contrary  to  the  principles  of 
that  fellow  down  in  Washington  as  eating  lettuce  with  a  fork 
is  contrary  to  the  principles  of  a  rabbit/' 

"Well,  I  don't  know.    He  may  be  forced  into  it." 

"Forced  ?  You  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about !  You 
can't  force  a  rabbit  to  fight." 

"But  Jim,"  protested  the  colonel,  "he's  as  good  as  said — " 

"He's  as  good  as  said  a  hundred  things  on  every  important 
subject  that's  come  up  since  he's  been  in  office,"  Dickey  inter 
rupted,  "and  every  one  of  the  things  he's  said  has  contradicted 
the  other  ninety-nine.  Look  at  Mexico" — he  jerked  his  head 
toward  the  southern  wall  as  if  there  were  a  map  of  Mexico 
there  instead  of  a  case  of  calf-bound  law-books.  "He  double- 
crossed  Huerta,  the  only  chance  Mexico  had.  Then  he  played 
with  Villa  and  told  Carranza  to  get  out  of  Villa's  back  yard. 
Next  day  he  was  across  the  fence  with  Carranza  and  helping 
him  heave  rocks  at  Villa.  He  sent  a  few  soldiers  into  Mexico, 
ordered  'em  out,  sent  'em  in  again,  ordered  'em  out  again, 
called  for  more  soldiers — just  enough  for  the  Mexicans  to 
laugh  at — told  some  of  those  they  needn't  come  after  all ;  then 
drew  out  the  whole  kerboodle.  Forced  to  fight!  Good  God, 
I  only  wish  he  could  be !  I've  lived  seventy-five  years  like  a 
good  American,  but  I'm  beginning  to  think  I've  lived  too 
long ;  I'm  beginning  to  be  ashamed  of  my  country  when  it  sits 
around  and  gets  rich  out  of  letting  other  folks  fight  its  bat 
tles."  The  old  man  thumped  his  desk.  "The  only  reason  for 
expecting  he'll  fight  is  that  he  got  himself  elected  by  saying 
he  kept  us  out  of  war !" 

Colonel  Eskessen  looked  gloomily  into  the  street. 

"I  telephoned  the  Doncaster  New  Era  this  morning,"  he 
countered.  "They  say  the  A.  P/s  got  his  speech  and  it's  sure 
for  war." 

"Oh,  of  course  he's  said  something!"  jeered  the  lawyer. 
"What  did  he  do  when  the  Dutchmen  blew  up  the  Lusitania  ? 
He  typewrote  'em  a  letter!  Then  they  torpedoed  the  Hes 
perian;  he  typewrote  'em  a  letter.  Then  they  torpedoed  the 
Arabic — and  he  typewrote  to  'em  again.  I  don't  believe  they 


VICTORIOUS  11 

read  'em  any  more — they  don't  have  to.  'Dear  William: 
kindly  remit/  Why,  there've  been  more  Americans  killed  by 
Germans  in  this  war  than  were  killed  by  the  Spanish  in  our 
war  with  Spain.  Did  you  know  that  ?" 

Colonel  Eskessen  nodded. 

"Well/'  pursued  Dickey,  "who  cares?  We're  too  proud  to 
fight.  The  only  thing  we  do  is  to  send  a  Texas  politician 
abroad  to  make  peace,  and  he's  the  man  that  says  he  fore 
warned  Europe  of  the  war — forewarned  every  country,  on  his 
own  showing,  except  his  own !" 

"I  know  all  that,  Jim,"  said  the  colonel;  "but  the  events 
of  the  last  month  certainly  seem  to  indicate  that  the  president 
can't  help  himself." 

"Poof !"  said  Lawyer  Dickey.  "February's  armed  neutral 
ity's  as  good  as  we'll  ever  get,  and  we'll  probably  go  back  on 
that  in  May.  We  won't  have  war  till  all  the  typewriters  are 
worn  out  and  the  typewriter-factories  shut  down." 


At  exactly  the  moment  when  Mrs.  Sarah  Brown's  alarm- 
clock  was  waking  her  in  Americus,  Andrew  Blunston  was  get 
ting  ready  to  go  to  bed  in  New  York.  The  hotel-room  that  he 
had  occupied  since  his  return  from  France  a  month  ago  was 
littered  with  papers,  for  he  had  been  writing  all  night. 

Blunston  rubbed  his  deep-set,  dark  eyes.  His  face  was 
weather-beaten  and  his  brown  hair  streaked  with  gray.  His 
physique  was  excellent,  but  this  last  war  was  wearing.  He  had 
written  his  account  of  the  first  battle  of  Ypres  by  candle 
light,  under  shell-fire,  working  for  ten  hours  at  a  stretch  and 
after  three  days  without  sleep  and  almost  without  food,  yet 
now,  in  this  April  of  1917,  he  felt  the  effects  of  one  night's 
toil. 

He  was  too  tired  to  reread  his  article  for  the  evening  edition 
of  the  paper  that  employed  him;  he  must  leave  that  to  the 
copy-desk.  He  had  rung  for  a  bell-boy  five  minutes  since. 
Now  the  boy  came  in.  Blunston  thrust  his  manuscript  into 
an  envelope  and  handed  it  to  the  bell-boy  for  delivery  two 
hours  later. 


12  VICTORIOUS 

"All  right,"  said  the  boy;  "an'  here's  a  telegram  for  you. 
It  must  V  come  las'  night  an'  they  forgot  it.  I  found  it  at 
the  desk/' 

He  went  out,  and  Blunston  opened  the  telegram: 

"Passport  Bureau  State  Department  refuses  re-issue  your 
passport  doubtless  due  your  criticism  administration's  pre 
vious  war  policy  must  get  right  with  them  if  you're  to  be  any 
use  in  case  America  takes  active  part  in  war. 

"Brannan,  Mg.  Ed." 

Blunston  went  to  the  door.  The  vague  figure  of  the  retreat 
ing  bell-boy  was  just  disappearing  around  the  corner  of  the 
hall.  Blunston  summoned  him  to  return. 

"Have  me  wakened  at  eleven  o'clock,"  he  said,  "and  see 
that  a  long-distance  call  to  the  "War  Department  is  put  in  for 
ten  forty-five." 

The  door  closed  again,  and  Blunston,  flinging  off  his  coat 
and  waistcoat,  paused  before  a  leather  traveling-case  for  photo 
graphs,  which  stood  open  upon  his  dressing-table.  There  was 
a  picture  of  his  mother  and  one  of  his  father,  both  reproduc 
tions  of  daguerreotypes,  and  beside  these  the  faded  likeness 
of  a  young  woman ;  she  wore  the  "mandolin-sleeves"  of  twenty- 
odd  years  ago,  and  they  were  so  ample  that  a  half  of  each 
had  been  beyond  the  range  of  the  camera;  she  was  black- 
browed  and  black-haired;  her  face  was  handsome,  strong,  but 
it  was  unlined. 

Blunston  flung  wide  the  windows  and  looked  out,  for  a  few 
minutes,  at  the  early  morning  quiet  of  Fifth  Avenue.  The  fa 
mous  street  was  empty;  the  city  seemed  sleeping  through  the 
dawn. 

VI 

Six  hours  later,  in  another  part  of  New  York,  a  girlish  fig 
ure,  swathed  in  a  peacock-blue  kimono,  was  sitting  before  a 
telephone.  Any  one  entering  the  bedroom  would  have  seen 
only  her  back  and,  above  a  graceful  neck,  coils  of  really 
golden  hair. 


VICTOKIOUS  13 

She  spoke  into  the  transmitter;  her  voice  was  low,  but  of 
excellent  timbre: 

"Mr.  Tottem,  this  is  Miss  Eaeburn.   Good  morning/' 

There  was  an  answer. 

"Mr.  Tottem,"  said  the  wearer  of  the  peacock-blue  kimono, 
"I've  thought  all  night  long  about  your  offer.  I  think  I've 
seen  all  its  advantages.  I  know  it  would  mean  a  lot  to  a  girl 
that  has  only  been  playing  seconds,  the  way  I  have,  and,  judg 
ing  by  what  you  tell  me  about  London,  war  would  be  hard  on 
the  stage  and  good  for  pictures ;  but  I  can't  accept  your  offer. 
It's  very  kind  of  you,  and  I'm  grateful,  only  I  mean  to  stick 
to  the  speaking-stage,  even  if  we  should  go  to  war/' 

VII 

That  was  at  about  half-past  eleven.  At  the  same  time,  but 
at  a  time  recorded  with  him  by  Central  reckoning,  the  occu 
pant  of  a  bed  in  a  Chicago  hotel — that  hotel  being  the  per 
manent  home  and  voting-address  of  the  sleeper — began  to 
show  signs  of  awakening. 

The  sheet,  which  described  a  gentle  arc  above  the  occupant's 
stomach,  rose  and  fell  with  less  regularity.  Farther  down,  a 
foot  was  evidently  twitching.  The  coverings  hid  even  the  top 
of  the  sleeper's  head,  but  a  plump  fist  was  presently  extended, 
and  then  a  whole-hearted  yawn  disturbed  the  quiet  of  the 
room. 

The  fist  opened;  it  closed  upon  the  sheet  and  dragged  it 
down — down  below  a  thicket  of  iron-gray  hair,  below  half- 
opened  hazel  eyes,  aquiline  nose  and  a  little  gray  mustache 
and  a  double  chin.  The  process  did  not  cease  until  it  had  re 
vealed  the  front  of  a  silk  nightshirt  embroidered  with  pink 
rosebuds. 

Mr.  B.  Frank  McGregor  was  awake. 

Somebody  had  been  pounding  at  the  door.  Mr.  McGregor, 
without  arising,  reached  the  key  and  turned  it. 

"Come  in,"  he  said,  and  there  entered  a  colored  boy  in  the 
uniform  of  the  hotel. 

The  boy  held  out  two  slips  of  paper,  one  white  and  one 
green. 


14  VICTORIOUS 

"Mornin',  Mr.  McGregor,"  said  the  boy.  "Here's  yo'  ticket 
an'  yo'  Pullman." 

"Good  morning,  George/'  said  Mr.  McGregor.  "What 
time  does  the  train  start?" 

"Yo'  got  three-quarters  of  an  hour,  Mr.  McGregor." 

"All  right.  Clear  away  that  mess" — Mr.  McGregor's  nod 
indicated  a  table  littered  with  bottles,  glasses,  syphons,  and" 
the  blue-prints  of  what  appeared  to  be  plans  for  aeroplanes. 
"Tell  Harry  to  send  up  my  regular  breakfast  and  then  phone 
my  chauffeur  to  bring  the  car  round.  Say  I've  got  to  go  to 
Washington  and  I'm  in  a  hurry." 

VIII 

At  one  o'clock,  eastern  time,  a  shaggy-haired,  dark  man, 
with  protruding  eyes,  then  copy-reader  for  a  New  York  news 
paper  and  on  the  day-shift,  entered  his  paper's  office  and 
paused,  as  usual,  before  the  case  of  little  boxes  that  held 
employees'  mail.  He  drew  out  one  envelope.  It  was  a  manila 
envelope  and  addressed  in  pencil  to  "Mr.  Louis  Garcia." 

He  read: 

"There  has  been  found  in  your  locker  a  check  from  The 
Star  for  $75.  This  confirms  me  in  my  belief  that,  despite 
your  denials,  it  was  you  who  sold  our  aldermanic-bribery 
story  to  that  paper,  tinder  the  circumstances  your  services 
are  no  longer  required  here.  Please  draw  from  the  cashier 
one  week's  salary  in  advance.  Check  from  The  Star  enclosed 
herewith.  "JAS.  M.  BRANNAN." 

IX 

Over  the  Ha}^tian  coast,  that  second  of  April,  the  sun, 
which  had  still  a  month  of  uncontested  sovereignty  ahead  of 
it  before  the  advent  of  the  rains,  shone  ardently  out  of  a 
waxen,  turquoise  sky.  Only  the  laziest  of  breezes  floated  up 
from  the  Caribbean  and  found  its  way  through  the  Windward 
Passage;  it  just  ruffled  the  sea  to  a  chatoyant  luster,  and, 
with  the  quietly  moving  sea,  moved  a  few  ships — black  shapes 
of  floating  steel. 


VICTOKIOUS  15 

Ashore,  between  two  groups  of  trees,  the  one  palmettos, 
the  other  a  motley  of  pines  and  Bermuda  cedars,  a  row  of 
men  crouched  and  strained  their  eyes  across  the  glimmering 
plain  toward  the  mountains.  A  light  haze  hung  above  the 
land.  Back  there  were  rising  forests  in  which  cocoa,  ginger 
and  arrowroot  grew  wild,  thickets  of  yellow  acoma,  manchi- 
neel,  mahogany,  satinwood  and  cinnamon.  From  the  edges 
of  those  forests  small  puffs  of  smoke  appeared,  and  now  and 
then  a  bullet  slipped  through  the  palmettos  and  sent  a  great 
frond  circling  slowly  downward.  The  men  near  the  shore 
also  had  guns  in  their  hands:  they  were  American  marines. 

"What's  that?"  demanded  one  of  them. 

He  pointed  to  a  four-legged,  cringing  figure  that  was  com 
ing  toward  them,  from  the  nearest  forest-edge,  at  a  sort  of 
slinking  trot. 

"It's  one  of  them  wild  hawgs,"  said  his  neighbor. 

A  third  man  had  better  eyes.  "Looks  like  a  wolf,"  said  he. 

It  did  look  like  a  wolf.  Even  though  it  was  coming  directly 
toward  them,  they  could  see  a  bushy  tail  sagging  low  be 
tween  its  hind  legs.  It  had  pointed  ears,  erect.  It  was  a 
brindled  brown  and  gray. 

"Wolf,  hell,"  said,  however,  the  first  man.  "Wolves  is  the 
only  kind  o'  wild  animal  they  ain't  got  in  this  stinkin'  hole. 
It's  some  sort  of  a  dawg." 

The  third  speaker  raised  his  rifle: 

"I'm  goin'  to  take  a  chance  at  him." 

"Hi !  Don't  you  do  it !"  A  dozen  voices  joined  the  chorus 
of  protest.  A  lieutenant's  added  to  them  official  finality. 

The  men  began  whistling.  The  animal  stopped,  regarded 
them  uncertainly,  came  on. 

He  came  all  the  way  up  to  them,  wagging  his  bushy  tail 
without  raising  it.  He  did  not  leap  upon  them  or  kiss  them ; 
he  did  not  bark;  but  very  quietly,  and  yet  very  briskly,  he 
moved  from  one  outstretched  palm  to  another  and  shoved  his 
damp  cold  muzzle  into  each. 

"Gee,"  said  the  man  that  had  first  observed  him :  "Here's 
a  mascot  for  us !  I  told  you  guys  it  was  a  dawg." 


16  VICTORIOUS 


France  rises  five  hours  before  America;  it  was  six  o'clock 
of  the  afternoon  in  France  when  Louis  Garcia  was  reading 
his  discharge  in  New  York,  but  at  that  hour  there  was  still 
in  progress  at  a  corner  of  France  something  that  had  begun 
there  before  the  dawning.  It  had  begun  long  before  Mrs. 
Brown's  alarm-clock  wakened  her,  and  yet  it  was  no  more 
than  under  way  when  Minnie  Taylor  said:  "War?  We 
should  worry !" 

There  had  been  an  unexpected  German  advance  at  an  in 
consequential  point  of  the  Western  Front.  It  was  nothing 
much.  It  had,  indeed,  no  military  importance  whatever.  It 
secured,  next  day,  only  a  few  lines  in  the  American  news 
papers.  Nevertheless,  it  meant  death  to  scores  of  persons; 
it  meant  ruin  to  hundreds,  and  in  the  present  chronicle  it 
is  a  factor  not  lightly  to  be  disregarded. 

In  the  early  darkness  had  sounded  a  rushing  of  feet,  a 
pounding  upon  doors;  then  cries  and  lights  and  confusion. 
Men  swore;  women  wailed;  roughly  wakened  children 
shrieked  impotently.  Horses  and  oxen  were  hastily  harnessed 
by  lantern-light,  live  stock  herded;  furniture  hustled  from 
ground-floor  rooms;  out  of  windows,  clatteringly  opened, 
mattresses  and  cradles  were  tossed. 

Within  an  hour  the  houses  of  a  village  were  left  tenantless, 
the  village  empty. 

Morning,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  day,  showed,  down  a  long, 
white,  poplar-bordered  road,  the  procession  of  one  of  those 
caravans  so  familiar  now,  a  few  years  ago  remembered  only 
by  them  who  remembered  1870.  Wagons,  carts,  bicycles, 
wheelbarrows  and  baby-carriages  hauled  by  animals,  dragged 
by  men  and  women,  propelled  by  children,  and  all  heavily 
freighted.  Here,  on  the  toppling  top  of  some  ramshackle  con 
veyance,  heaped  with  the  household  goods  of  generations,  a 
great-grandfather,  too  feeble  to  walk,  carrying  his  great 
grandchild;  there,  chairs,  tables,  bedding,  clothes,  kitchen- 
utensils,  tossed  together  in  panic;  everywhere,  blocking  the 
white  roadway,  all  but  the  decrepit  plodding  onward  afoot. 


VICTOKIOUS  17 

THere  were  mothers  with  babies  at  the  breast;  plucking 
at  their  mothers'  skirts  there  were  crying  children  that  had 
not  so  long  since  learned  to  walk.  There  were  white-haired 
men,  grasping  palsied  canes  and  bending  far  toward  the  earth 
that  was  soon  to  receive  them.  There  were  girls  that  sobbed 
and  boys  with  swollen  eyes  round  from  fear;  and  there  was 
a  mad  woman  that,  in  1914,  had  given  her  betrothed  to  the 
hopper  of  war  and  now  fled  in  her  wedding-clothes.  But  men 
of  fighting-age  there  were  none. 

Whoso  could  at  all  carry  carried  a  bundle  weighted  to 
the  theretofore  unguessed  limit  of  the  bearer's  strength — 
a  bundle  pregnant  with  convertible  property,  heirlooms  or 
pathetic  keepsakes.  Every  little  while  the  limit  was  exceeded 
or  the  road  too  hard :  a  bundle  fell  and  aborted  its  sorry  con 
tents  amid  the  dust. 

There  was  little  talking,  only  commands  to  the  draught- 
animals,  sometimes  the  words  of  one  woman  seeking  to  com 
fort  another,  or  of  a  mother  petting  or  urging  a  child.  For 
the  most  part,  the  caravan  might  have  been  a  caravan  of 
mutes,  pressing  their  palms  against  their  foreheads,  making 
helpless  gestures  with  their  eloquently  opened  hands,  dully 
accepting  the  inevitable. 

One  girl  there  was,  however,  who  went  with  her  hands 
clenched  and  her  head  up.  She  was  broad-shouldered,  full- 
bosomed,  erect.  She  walked  as  only  peasants  walk  and  queens. 
Others,  all  the  others,  were  as  insensate  ligan  swirled  along 
with  a  torrent;  in  this  girl's  agate  eyes  there  burned  a  cold 
fire,  under  the  tan  upon  her  cheeks  there  was  a  red;  she  bit 
into  the  crimson  of  her  lower  lip  until  it  grew  as  white  as 
the  strong  compressing  teeth.  Her  name  was  L6onie  Picaud. 

XI 

In  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  a  lantern-jawed  man  was 
addressing  a  joint  session  of  the  two  Houslfrof  Congress.  He 
was  saying: 

"But  the  right  is  more  precious  than  peace,  and  we  shall 
fight  for  the  things  which  we  have  always  carried  nearest  our 


18  VICTORIOUS 

hearts — for  democracy,  for  the  right  of  those  who  submit  to 
authority  to  have  a  voice  in  their  own  governments,  for  the 
rights  and  liberties  of  small  nations,  for  a  universal  dominion 
of  right  by  such  a  concert  of  free  peoples  as  shall  bring  peace 
and  safety  to  all  nations  and  make  the  world  itself  at  last 
free.  To  such  a  task  we  can  dedicate  our  lives  and  our  for 
tunes,  everything  that  we  are  and  everything  that  we  have, 
with  the  pride  of  those  who  know  that  the  day  has  come 
when  America  is  privileged  to  spend  her  blood,  and  her 
might,  for  the  principles  that  gave  her  birth  and  happiness 
and  the  peace  which  she  has  treasured.  God  helping  her,  she 
can  do  no  other." 

Thus,  for  those  with  whom  we  are  here  concerned,  and  for 
millions  of  other  persons,  the  second  of  April,  1917. 


CHAPTER  II 

IN  WHICH  THE  MEMORY  OF  AN  OLD  LOVE  PLAYS  HAVOC  WITH 
A  NEW  ;  CRIES  "PLACE  A  LA  JEUNESS 
TION  OF  A  VISION  OF  JEANNE  D?ARC 


A  NEW  ;  CRIES  "PLACE  A  LA  JEUNESSE  \" ;  AND  MAKES  MEN- 


BLUNSTON — he  had  his  passport  now — sat  in  the  smoking- 
car  of  the  afternoon  accommodation-train.  He  wore  his  old 
war-correspondent's  uniform.  For  the  first  time  in  many 
years,  he  was  going  home. 

He  could  not  say  why;  or  would  not.  There  had  been  a 
time  when  he  loved  all  Doncaster  County,  and,  especially, 
Americus,  but  that  was  when  he  loved  also  a  girl  of  the  small 
town;  and  the  girl  married  another  man.  The  Americus  of 
his  birth  and  boyhood  had  become  only  that  dream-home 
whereto  tired  and  busy  men  withdraw,  from  crowded  cor 
ners  of  the  earth,  in  that  brief  pause  between  daylight  and 
evening,  or  in  the  last  minutes  of  waking  before  sleep.  Now, 
not  only  in  age,  but  in  deed.  Blunston  had  almost  reached 
what  he  knew  must  be  the  summit  of  his  career;  a  few  inevi 
table  steps,  and  he  would  have  achieved,  in  his  profession,  the 
peak  he  had  been  so  long  striving  for.  During  the  breathing- 
spell  before  that  last  ascent,  something  had  compellingly  urged 
him  to  make,  for  so  long  as  possible,  the  dream-home  real. 

In  the  Doncaster  station,  where  he  changed  trains,  he 
bought  a  copy  of  the  Americus  Daily  Spy.  He  smiled  at  the 
quaint  wording;  it  represented  a  tradition: 

"A  delightful  social  occurrence  occurred  last  night,  when 
ten  of  her  young  friends  tendered  a  surprise-party  to  Miss 
Annie  Drumbaugh,  residing  at  922  Barber  Street,  on  the  oc 
casion  of  her  seventh  birthday.  There  was  a  gift-shower  and 
various  games  were  played.  At  a  seasonable  hour  refresh 
ments  were  served  and  an  enjoyable  time  was  had  by  all." 

19 


20  VICTOK10US 

There  was  not  much  changed  in  the  Spy.  In  another 
column  he  did  find  an  account  of  a  fire  in  a  hardware-store, 
written  with  spirit  and  a  vivid  appreciation  of  dramatic  and 
news  values;  the  author  of  that,  he  reflected,  would  soon  be 
working  for  a  Philadelphia  paper;  but  most  of  the  material 
might  have  been  clipped  from  any  issue  of  twenty  years  ago. 

He  turned  back  those  twenty  years. 

Sarah  Tollens  had  then  been  on  the  safe  side  of  the  rigid 
social  dividing-line  of  the  town.  Her  people — she  was  an 
only  child — were  proudly  poor,  and  Sarah  was  tall  and  dark 
and  handsome,  and  Blunston  was  engaged  to  her;  but  there 
had  drifted  to  the  little  community  a  certain  Phil  Brown, 
one  of  those  American  adventurers  who  had  flocked  to  Hawaii 
in  the  early  nineties  and  who,  having  first  cast  their  lot  with 
the  cause  of  Liliuokalani,  ended  by  plotting  her  overthrow. 
Marriage  before  acquaintance  is  one  of  our  national  dogmas : 
Brown,  folding  about  him  the  mantle  of  romance,  married 
Sarah  out  of  hand  in  the  winter  of  1896,  and  Blunston,  de 
ciding  that  since  he  could  not  have  love,  he  must  have  labor, 
began  his  journalistic  career.  Everybody,  he  reasoned,  must 
have  in  his  life  something  bigger  than  himself.  He  saw  no 
more  of  Americus;  he  thought  no  more  than  he  could  help 
of  Sarah.  Once  Lawyer  Dickey  inserted  in  a  legal  communi 
cation  the  statement  that  the  Browns  had  named  their  first 
born  Andrew  at  the  mother's  behest  and  McKinley  at  the 
father's,  but  Blunston  tried  to  see  no  significance  in  the  for 
mer  name;  later,  Mr.  Dickey  ventured  to  remark  that  Phil, 
having  enlisted  for  service  in  Cuba  and  got  as  far  as  Porto 
Eico,  was  dead  of  red-tape  and  fever  at  Montauk  Point,  but 
Blunston  did  not  get  the  letter  until  many  months  later  at 
Peking. 

By  that  time,  he  was  a  war-correspondent,  and  even  war- 
writing  was  an  old  story.  The  Boxer  revolt,  the  Philippine 
rebellion,  the  Boer  war  and  the  Eusso-Japanese,  Italy's  ven 
ture  of  1912,  numerous  promising  disturbances  in  Central 
and  South  America  and  both  the  Balkan  conflicts — Blunston 
had  seen  something  of  them  all.  But  since  the  autumn  of 
1914,  he  had  held  that  the  Entente  was  fighting  America's 


VICTORIOUS  21 

battles  along  with  its  own,  and  he  had  been  devoting  his  en 
ergies  to  the  aid  of  those  voices  which  pleaded  with  us  to 
play  our  part.  Now  his  country's  feet  were  set  upon  the  road 
to  which  he  had  helped  to  lead  it;  he  himself  beyond  the 
draft-age,  Blunston  was,  at  all  events,  to  crown  his  life's 
work  by  chronicling  America's  share  in  the  World  War. 

There  were  those  who  did  not  like  him  for  his  previous 
propaganda,  and  there  had  been  some  trouble  about  securing 
the  papers  necessary  to  his  return  to  France ;  these  difficulties 
seemed  at  last  at  an  end.  The  Committee  on  Public  Infor 
mation  had  announced  that,  by  arrangement  with  the  War 
Department,  a  dozen  correspondents  would  accompany  our 
armies  abroad.  He  had  secured  for  himself  one  set  of  creden 
tials. 

He  pushed  his  service-cap  back  from  his  grizzled  hair. 
There  was  a  light  on  his  weather-beaten  face. 

The  train  rounded  a  hillside.  Blunston  looked  out  at  the 
mile-and-a-half  breadth  of  river  dotted  with  rocks  and  leafy 
islands  and  surrounded  by  wooded  hills.  This  was  Home. 

The  first  of  the  rules  to  provide  for  a  happy  homecoming 
is  that  commanding  us  not  to  remain  long  away.  The  station 
at  which  Blunston  dismounted  appeared  to  him  smaller  than 
formerly — and  dirtier.  The  Three  Mounts  House  and  the 
Adams  Hotel,  which  he  remembered  as  prosperous  hostelries, 
were  fallen  to  the  tavern-state.  No  city  in  China,  no  ruined 
village  in  Belgium  had  seemed  so  remotely  strange  to  him. 

At  the  corner  of  Second  Street,  where  a  farm-wagon  was 
standing,  he  saw  an  Amish  boy  engaged  in  repairing  some 
piece  of  harness.  At  least  the  Amish  costume  was  familiar; 
its  wearer  might  have  been  one  of  the  acquaintances  of  the 
prodigal's  early  days,  untouched  by  time. 

"What  is  the  best  hotel  in  town?"  asked  Blunston. 

The  lad  looked  up. 

"Sir?" 

It  was  the  old  countryside  equivalent  of  "what  ?"  Blunston 
smiled  in  recognizing  it.  He  repeated  his  inquiry. 

"I  don't  know  still."  The  Amish  boy's  teeth  flashed  a 
^friendly  grin,  but  he  shook  his  long  hair  helplessly.  "I  heard 


22  VICTOKiOUS 

folks  talk  about  the  'Americus'  already;  but  I  ain't  no  use 
fer  hotels/' 

In  the  past  few  weeks,  the  fact  of  war  had  come  home  with 
startling  speed  to  hundreds  of  persons  in  Doncaster  County; 
to  Chrissly  Shuman,  who  had  as  yet  seen  no  soldiers,  it  now 
first  came  home  in  the  form  of  a  war-correspondent's  uniform. 

"They're  tryin'  to  take  me,"  confided  Chrissly.  "Us  Amish 
don't  hold  by  fightin';  but  they're  tryin'  to  take  me  'cause 
I  ain't  joined  church  yet."  His  eyes  smoldered  as  he  bent 
again  to  his  work.  "Germany's  all  right,"  he  said;  "we  ain't 
got  no  business  pickin'  on  to  Germany." 

II 

A  change  in  Elm  Avenue  Blunston  saw  immediately:  it 
had  been  barbarously  denuded  of  its  trees,  and  standards  for 
electric  lights  replaced  them.  The  old-fashioned  brick-dwell 
ing  that  had  stood  opposite  the  Opera  House  in  the  memories 
of  his  boyhood  was  suffering,  among  its  neighboring  shops, 
from  the  tenantless  disrepair  of-*  superannuated  property 
"held  for  a  rise  in  values,"  and  when  the  returned  native 
registered  at  the  Hotel  Americus,  his  name  meant  nothing 
to  the  impassive  clerk. 

Then  he  chanced  to  look  over  his  shoulder  and  saw,  coming 
up  the  center  of  the  street,  two  hundred  pounds  of  human 
flesh  under  a  blue  cap  and  in  blue  clothes.  It  couldn't  be 
—and  yet  it  was— "Babe"  Campbell:  "Babe,"  the  town's 
only  policeman  when  Blunston  was  a  lad,  hale  at  seventy-odd, 
the  town's  only  policeman  now.  Blunston  ran  out  and 
pumped  the  old  man's  heavy  hand  and  shouted  his  greetings 
into  the  old  man's  long-deafened  ears. 

He  was  just  about  to  reenter  the  hotel  when  he  encountered 
Lawyer  Dickey,  headed  for  the  barroom  where,  every  after 
noon  on  leaving  his  office,  he  took  his  sole  daily  dose  of  alco 
hol  ;  a  drink  of  whisky  followed  by  a  glass  of  lager-beer.  The 
attorney  spoke  to  him  precisely  as  if  they  had  parted  but 
yesterday. 

"There  are  odd  things  happening/'  said  Lawyer  Dickey, 


VICTOKIOUS  23 

when  Blunston  and  lie  were  seated  at  a  dark  table  in  the 
shadows  behind  the  swinging  doors.  "People  are  changing 
life-long  opinions.  There's  Hunter,  the  wall-paper  man,  a 
dyed-in-the-wool  Eepublican  and  a  G.  A.  K.  at  that:  they've 
thrown  so  much  sand  in  his  eyes  that  I  bet,  if  you  talked  an 
cient  history  to  him,  he'd  say  Bryan  was  right  when  he  ruled 
that  Americans  ought  to  keep  off  the  sea." 

Few  people  speak  in  paragraphs;  Blunston  began  para 
graphs,  but  seldom  ended  one.  His  voice  was  quiet,  and 
the  conclusions  of  his  sentences  were  generally  lost  outright. 

"That  would  be  ancient  history,"  he  began;  "of  course  the 
people  in  Washington  weren't  really  too  proud  to  fight :  only 
too  fat  ...  even  to  get  ready  .  .  ." 

The  war-correspondent  left  his  lawyer  still  brooding  over 
his  beer,  and  walked  toward  Second  Street,  until  he  reached 
the  house  that  his  first  American  forefathers  had  built  in  the 
middle  sixteen  hundreds. 

Standing  in  a  vast  plot  of  ground  well  away  from  the 
street,  it  was  a  long,  stone,  ivy-covered  building,  rather  Lan- 
castershire  than  colonial.  Blunston  had  not  asked  Lawyer 
Dickey  to  go  back  to  his  office  for  the  key.  The  remaining 
son  contented  himself  with  strolling  around  the  house  and 
about  the  great  yard  behind. 

Oak  and  honey-locust  and  Norway-maple,  their  riot  of  fo 
liage  made  a  grateful  screen  from  the  afternoon  sun.  The  gar 
dens  had  died  of  neglect ;  but  a  petulant  cat-bird  was  calling 
from  the  thicket  as  one  always  used  to  call ;  there  flashed  from 
the  Yellow  Spanish  cherry-tree  an  oriole  in  the  colors  that, 
thus  seeing  them,  Sir  George  Calvert  had  chosen  for  his  ser 
vants'  livery. 

There  was  no  war  here.  The  empty  old  house  cast  across 
the  sunlight  a  slanting  shadow  like  the  cool  breath  of  a  peace 
centuries  old. 

No  fence  separated  this  yard  from  that  of  the  distant 
house-next-door.  That  was  a  comfortable  brick  house,  scarce 
fifty  years  its  neighbor's  junior,  and  it,  too,  had  always  been 
inhabited  by  Blunstons.  He  could  see  some  women's  frocks 
there  now — probably  those  of  the  cousins  he  tepidly  liked  and 


24  VICTORIOUS 

never  wrote  to,  three  women  of  about  his  own  age  and  unmar 
ried.  The  girls  would  have  grown  up  to  be  like  their  father. 
He  supposed  he  ought  to  go  across  to  them. 

He  came  upon  a  picture  typical  of  the  more  leisurely  phase 
of  small-town  life  in  America  since  the  time  when  it  ceased 
to  be  a  farm  isolated  in  the  wilderness.  Save  for  the  costumes, 
Blunston  could  have  imagined  himself  restored  to  the  era  of 
fox-hunting  Quakers  that  were  his  ancestors.  Black-haired 
Cousin  Flora  sat  beside  the  tea-table  on  the  grass ;  red-haired 
Cousin  Mollie  and  red-haired  Cousin  Becky  were  chatting 
volubly  to  a  tall,  lean,  spectacled  man  in  a  white  waistcoat, 
who  must  be  the  Ealph  Bolingbroke  from  the  big  gray  house 
on  Oak  Street,  who  owned  the  local  umbrella-factory ;  as  well 
as  to  the  merry,  sharp-eyed  young  woman  of  considerable 
girth,  who  must  be  Bolingbroke's  new  second  wife,  and  who 
talked  instead  of  listening.  Everything  was  correct,  every 
thing  was  pleasant;  above  all,  everything  was  established. 

His  cousins  greeted  Blunston  with  shrill  cries  of  delighted 
surprise;  Ralph  shook  hands  and  gravely  presented  him  to 
Mrs.  Ralph.  Blunston,  who  always  drank  tea  in  a  sort  of 
vague  Celtic  twilight,  uttered  attenuated  sentences  and  was 
glad  when  Mrs.  Ralph  put  an  end  to  them  by  saying  that  she 
hadn't  read  his  work  but  didn't  approve  of  it.  He  wished 
that  the  conversation  would  swing  away  from  himself  and 
give  him  more  news  of  the  townspeople. 

It  did  when  Miss  Hattie  Lloyd  arrived.  Miss  Hattie 
looked  as  old  as  the  town  and  knew  every  evil  thing  that  had 
ever  been  done  in  it ;  she  was  °  miniature,  witchlike  body  with 
a  sharp  red  nose  that  met  a  sharp  white  chin;  she  perpetu 
ally  hugged  herself  and  shot  pricking  glances  at  you  from  the 
corners  of  her  beady  eyes  whenever  she  said  anything  espe 
cially  unpleasant. 

The  talk  might  have  shifted  without  Miss  Hattie's  advent ; 
nevertheless,  it  was  Miss  Hattie's  knife  that  severed  the 
thread. 

"Andrew,"  she  said,  "I  suppose  you  find  people  a  good  deal 
changed  here,  don't  you?" 

"No   .   .   .  perhaps  ...   not  seen  many,"  he  murmured. 


VICTORIOUS  25 

"A  good  many  that  were  up  in  the  world  have  come  down," 
said  Miss  Hattie.  She  seemed  to  find  the  fact  decidedly  sat 
isfactory.  "Seen  Sarah  Tollens?" 

He  knew  it  was  this  name  he  had  been  rather  anxious  to 
hear,  but  he  did  not  like  hearing  it  from  Miss  Hattie. 

"Nobody  sees  her  now."  Miss  Hattie  cocked  her  head. 
"She  lives  in  a  dreadful  part  of  town.  Of  course  none  of  us 
have  ever  seen  her  since  her  marriage." 

Blunston  could  feel  the  heat  of  his  cousins'  silent  indigna 
tion.  They  had  disapproved,  he  recalled,  of  Sarah  when  she 
broke  her  engagement  to  him,  but  they  were  not  ghouls  in 
the  graveyard  of  other  people's  affections.  He  did  not  answer 
Miss  Hattie. 

Perhaps  young  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  felt  the  tension  and 
wanted  to  relieve  it :  he  was  sure  she  meant  no  harm,  but  she 
said: 

"Oh,  yes:  it's  Mrs.  Sarah  Brown  you're  talking  about. 
She  was  an  old  sweetheart  of  yours,  wasn't  she,  Mr.  Blun 
ston?" 

He  smiled  faintly.    As  soon  as  he  decently  could,  he  left. 

Mollie  followed  him  to  the  gate. 

"I'm  sorry,"  she  said.  She  knew  he  would  know  what  she 
meant. 

"Is  it  true?"  asked  Blunston. 

"What  that  abominable  old  woman  said?  Well,  yes,  I'm 
afraid  it  is.  Sarah's  just  dropped  out.  Only  it  oughtn't  to 
be  talked  about  because  it's  nobody's  fault." 

"No,"  said  Blunston,  "of  course  it  isn't." 

He  was  thinking  of  taking  the  evening  train  back  to  New 
York. 

ill 

It  was  Colonel  Eskesson  that  kept  Blunston  in  town  over 
night.  The  short  man  with  good-humored  eyes  and  scant  hair 
dragged  across  the  bald  flat  top  of  his  head  had  not  altered 
within  Blunston's  memory,  but  he  could  not  recall  Blunston 
unaided. 

"Why,  so  it  is!"  he  beamed  once  the  aid  had  been  given. 


26  VICTORIOUS 

"Darned  if  it  isn't  Andrew  Bhmston  !  How  are  you,  anyhow  ? 
You  must  have  had  some  exciting  experiences  in  France. 
Better  come  with  me  to  the  Elks  to-night;  we're  going  to 
present  wrist-watches  to  all  the  officers  of  Company  C." 

The  colonel  had  had  a  busy  day,  as  usual,  and  his  made-up 
bow-tie  had  slipped  around  his  low  "stand-up"  collar  until  it 
was  directly  under  his  right  ear.  He  was  still  dazed  by  the  war 
and  its  potential  effect  on  his  investments — there  had  been 
some  absurd  talk  in  the  Philadelphia  newspapers  about  the 
possibility  of  the  government's  taking  over  the  railroads  — 
and,  as  Blunston  adapted  his  stride  to  the  older  man's,  Colo 
nel  Eskessen  dismissed  the  national  situation  with  a  chuck 
ling  reference  to  Lawyer  Dickey: 

"So  you've  seen  Dickey  ?  Yes,  yes :  same  old  Jim.  Suppose 
he  told  you  the  Democrats  were  riding  the  country  to  perdi 
tion?  He  tells  me  that  every  morning,  regular.  What  is  it 
the  fellow  said  in  the  magazine?  'Making  the  world  safe 
for  Democrats?'  That's  Dickey  all  over.  Fine  old  man,  Jim" 
— Mr.  Dickey  was  perhaps  two  years  the  colonel's  senior — 
"but — well,  a  little  impulsive  now  and  then." 

At  the  Elks'  headquarters,  they  passed,  through  a  second- 
floor  room  in  which  the  Americus  Silver  Cornet  Band  was 
playing,  to  a  pleasantly  cool  balcony  overlooking  a  leafy  back 
yard.  Several  guests  in  uniform  were  there,  and  presently, 
after  the  wrist-watches  had  been  conferred,  the  band  played 
Keep  the  Home  Fires  Burning,  and  everybody  joined  in  the 
chorus. 

A  voice  rose  clear  of  the  others.  It  was  not  one  of  those 
voices  superior  and  conscious  of  its  superiority :  it  was  dis 
tinctive  because  it  had  to  be. 

The  singer  was  a  very  much  dressed  lad,  a  lad  freckled, 
red-headed.  He  did  not  know  that  he  was  singing  in  a 
stronger  voice  than  his  neighbors;  his  face  was  radiant  with 
a  troubled  enthusiasm,  and  his  firm  brown  eyes  were  fixed  on 
the  war-correspondent. 

Their  glances  met.  The  boy  flushed.  He  stopped  singing 
and  looked  away. 

"Who  is  he?"  asked  Blunston. 


VICTORIOUS  27 

"That?"  said  his  host.    "Oh,  that's  Andy." 

"Andy?" 

"Yes,  one  of  our  reporters.  Andy  Brown.  You  remember 
Sarah  Tollens?  Oh,  yes,  of  course— 

The  colonel  also  remembered  something.  He  hurried  away 
from  the  topic  of  Andy's  parentage: 

"His  clothes  are  just  part  of  his  enthusiasm.  So  proud  of 
being  a  reporter,  you  know.  Has  the  news-sense.  Oh,  quite 
valuable:  he  knows  everybody  in  Americus  and  who  married 
everybody  and  who's  cousin  to  who — and  everybody  knows 
him  and  likes  him — everybody." 

"Did  this  boy  write  a  story  in  to-day's  Spy  about  a  surprise- 
party  at  .  .  ." 

"Yes.  He  wrote  our  fire-story,  too." 

That  he  had  written  them  both,  Blunston  wanted  to  say, 
was  incredible ! 

"He's  crazy  to  go  to  war,"  the  colonel  was  saying.  "Volun 
teered,  but  they  found  a  heart-murmur.  Just  as  well.  The 
fellows  say  Andy  came  across  a  wounded  rabbit  out  here  in 
the  woods  one  time;  he  carried  it  all  the  way  back  to  town 
to  be  killed  because  he  hadn't  the  heart  to  kill  it  himself." 

Andy  Brown  did  know  everybody  in  Americus,  but,  for 
all  his  obviousness,  there  was  nobody  in  Americus  knew  every 
thing  about  Andy.  His  love  of  the  woods  and  the  river  was 
common  to  most  of  the  townsfolk;  the  spirit  that  strung 
dance-programs  across  his  bureau  was  a  spirit  shared  by  half 
the  other  boys ;  his  attentions  to  bangled  Minnie  Taylor  were 
the  mere  effervescence  of  youth.  But  the  war  had  set  an  in 
delible  mark  on  his  soul. 

The  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  began  it.  The  effect  of  this, 
however,  seemed  to  have  passed  away  until  he  heard  Lawyer 
Dickey  talk  about  Germany  treading  on  democracy's  toes, 
when  the  chance  of  our  joining  the  European  struggle  seemed 
to  Andy  a  sort  of  heroic  gambol.  Then  had  coine  the  acknowl 
edgment  of  a  state  of  war;  the  printed  appeal  to  "Enlist  and 
Avoid  the  Draft" — and  to  "Join  Your  Home  Company  and 
Fight  Beside  Your  Friends."  Andy  was  carried  high  on  the 
flood  of  patriotism :  only  his  mother's  dependence  had  some- 


28  VICTOKIOUS 

what  checked  his  progress.  He  dreamed  a  day-dream  about 
Joan  of  Arc — a  sort  of  Franco-American  Joan  of  Arc,  with 
golden  hair  and  girlish  figure  and  low  and  thrilling  voice, 
but  with  a  pure  face  and  brave  enkindling  eyes — he  volun 
teered. 

Much  of  this,  although  he  was  not  himself  acquainted  with 
it,  Colonel  Eskessen's  talk  conveyed  to  Blunston.  He  was  in 
the  midst  of  it  when  Blunston  saw  the  president  of  the  Mer 
chants'  and  Manufacturers'  Association  rise: 

"We  have  with  us  to-night,"  that  gentleman  said,  "a  son  of 
Americus  that  Americus  is  proud  of,  a  famous  war-corre 
spondent  who  has  just  returned  from  the  Western  Front, 
where  some  of  our  evening's  guests  will  soon  be  going — " 

In  short,  Blunston  was  called  on  for  a  speech. 

When  he  sat  down,  and  the  company,  with  the  notable  ex 
ception  of  Andy,  were  singing  My  Old  Kentucky  Home,  a 
waiter  handed  him  a  note.  It  was  addressed  to  "Mr.  Blun 
ston,  Present,"  and  was  written  in  the  cramped,  boyish  hand 
of  one  that  has  long  ago  formed  the  habit  of  the  typewriter. 
It  asked  the  favor  of  an  interview  "after  the  meeting/'  and 
it  came  from  Andy. 

IV 

In  the  damp  coolness  of  the  street,  Andy  was  waiting.  It 
was  too  dark  to  see  him. 

"Well?"  said  Blunston. 

He  wouldn't  help  the  boy  to  utterance.  He  expected  him 
to  ask  for  a  letter  to  some  editor  in  Philadelphia. 

"The  Field  Service  Regulations  say  an  accredited  corre 
spondent  can  have  a  messenger  when  he  goes  to  France.  Can 
I  be  your  messenger?" 

It  came  out  in  a  burst.  Blunston  could  hear  the  boy  gasp 
at  his  temerity  when  he  said  it;  he  hoped  the  boy  could  not 
hear  the  gasp  with  which  it  was  received. 

".  .  .  qualification,"  stammered  Blunston.  "Have  you 
any?" 

Andy  had  regained  his  desperate  courage : 

"I'm  a  hustler.     Colonel  Eskessen  will  tell  you.    And  I'll 


VICTOKIOUS  29 

go  for  almost  nothing — just  enough  to  keep  things  running 
at  home." 

"A  war-correspondent    .    .    .    much  of  the  danger,  none  of 

the  glory." 

"Oh,  I  couldn't  be  a  correspondent." 

"Why  not?" 

•"I  can't  write." 

".  .  .  can't  tell  till  you  try.  Good  story  on  the  fire,  poor 
on  the  surprise-party.  .  ." 

"You — you  asked  the  colonel  who  wrote  them  ?" 

Blunston  swore  softly:  there  was  reportorial  keenness  in 
this  young  man. 

"Sir?"  asked  Andy.  He  had  not  heard  the  oath,  and  he 
asked  what  Blunston  had  said  with  just  the  word  the  Amish 
boy  had  used. 

The  correspondent  was  amused :  this  was  a  queer  mixture  of 
sharpness  and  provinciality.  His  amusement  betrayed  him 
into  a  passing  amiability. 

"Do  you  know  French?" 

"I  took  it  in  high-school." 

"Oh,  lord ! — where  did  you  learn  to  write  ?" 

"I  can't.  I  just  started  in.  Lately  I've  been  trying  to  bone 
up.  And  then  I  study  all  the  president's  speeches ;  he  writes 
so  well." 

"He— what?"  asked  Blunston. 

"You  don't  mean  you  don't  think  so  ?" 

Blunston's  answer  was  not  intelligible.  What  he  was  think 
ing  about,  as  they  walked  down  the  dark  street,  was  something 
that  Andy  would  never  know. 

"Sir?"  said  Andy. 

This  time  the  servile  provincialism  on  the  lips  of  Sarah 
Brown's  son  annoyed  the  man  that  had  loved  Sarah  Tollens. 

"Don't  say  that,"  said  Blunston  sharply.  "Never!  You 
mean  'What':  say  <What.'" 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  the  boy. 

"And  don't  say  'Yes,  sir5  and  'No,  sir.'  'Yes'  and  'No/ 
It's  the  tone.  .  .  ." 

What  was  it  Colonel  Eskessen  had  told  him?     Something 


30  VICTOKIOUS 

about  a  wounded  rabbit.  This  boy  who  couldn't  kill  a  wounded 
rabbit  wanted  to  be  a  war-correspondent. 

"The  thing's  absurd,"  said  Blunston;  "the  whole  thing." 
• — The  mud,  the  filth,  the  risks,  the  horrors! — "Why  do  you 
want  to  go  ?"  he  asked. 

Apparently  Andy  found  it  hard  to  talk  of  his  emotions. 
Nevertheless,  they  were  stronger  than  his  tenderness  for 
them:  in  a  few  disjointed,  half-apologetic  phrases,  he  made 
his  hardened  senior  understand  what  the  coming  of  war  had 
meant  to  the  boy  in  Americus,  what  the  great  rising  of  the 
nation,  what  it  had  been  to  him  to  volunteer,  and  what  to  be 
refused. 

They  had  come  to  a  halt,  Blunston  did  not  know  why. 

"Our  own  doctor  said  it  was  all  nonsense  about  the  heart- 
murmur,"  Andy  said.  "One  man  in  ten  has  it,  he  told  me. 
And  it  won't  interfere  with  my  work  if  you  take  me.  I'm  as 
strong  and  healthy  as  any  man  my  age." 

Blunston  believed  it.  '"Only,"  he  persisted,  "I  still  don't 
see.  .  .  ." 

And  then  Andy,  in  a  flash  and  without  violating  the  sanc 
tity  of  his  dream,  made  his  poor  Franco-American  Joan  of 
Arc  a  living  thing  to  his  hearer : 

"I've  got  to  do  my  part;  everybody's  got  to.  A  fellow  feels 
that.  It's  kind  of  as  if  Joan  of  Arc  had  come  back,  and  come 
to  America  and  reminded  us  of  Lafayette,  and  as  if  she — she 
was  really  a  saint,  you  know,  right  out  of  Heaven — "  He 
broke  off  with  a  gulp.  "I've  got  to  help,"  he  ended :  "and  this 
is  the  only  way  I  can." 

There  was  a  burst  of  light  beside  them.  It  blazed  over  the 
face  of  the  freckled  boy,  transfigured  by  earnestness,  the  lips 
compressed,  the  eyes  on  fire  with  a  high  eagerness.  It  came 
from  an  opened  door,  and  in  the  doorway  stood  silhouette^ 
the  tall  thin  form  of  a  woman. 

"Is  that  you,  Andy  ?"  asked  the  woman. 

"Yes,  mother,"  said  Andy.  He  laid  an  appealing  hand  on 
Blunston's  sleeve.  "Mother,  this  is — " 

"It's  impossible,"  Blunston  almost  shouted.  "Don't  need  a 
messenger.  Always  work  alone  anyhow  and  .  .  ." 


VICTOEIOUS  31 

He  turned  to  escape;  but  Andy's  grip  lost  its  persuasive 
quality;  it  became  force;  it  held  Blunston  fast,  while  Andy 
said: 

"Mother,  this  is  Mr.  Blunston,  the  famous  war-correspond 
ent.  He's  come  to  talk  to  you  about  my  going  over  there  to 
be  his  messenger." 

Whereupon,  leaving  them  facing  each  other,  Andy  ran  in 
continently  into  the  house. 


Did  Andy  know  of  that  old  engagement,  and  was  he  making 
capital  out  of  his  knowledge?  Blunston  swept  the  thought 
away :  whatever  she  might  seem  to  others,  to  a  boy  his  mother 
is  always  a  wonder-worker;  Andy  had  taken  it  for  granted 
that,  chance  having  brought  about  this  meeting,  Mrs.  Brown 
could  get  her  son  what  he  most  desired. 

"I  heard  voices,"  she  was  saying — her  voice  was  monot 
onous — "I  always  wait  up  for  him — not  that  it's  necessary ;  he 
always  has  been  a  good  boy — and  so  I  opened  the  door." 

"How  do  you  do,  Sarah?"  Blunston  said. 

Their  cold  hands  met ;  hers  was  hard. 

"How  do  you  do,  Drew  ?"  There  was  an  observable  pause. 
Her  back  being  to  the  light,  she  was  as  .much  hidden  from  him 
as  Andy  had  been  when  they  met  on  Elm  Avenue.  Blunston 
was  glad  to  have  his  interlocutor  concealed.  "Won't  you 
come  in?"  she  asked. 

"I— no.    If  you  don't  mind,"  he  said,  "I'd  rather   .    .    ." 

The  house  was  shabby;  her  brief  hesitancy  told  him  that. 
She  wanted  to  encounter  him  no  more  than  he  wanted  to 
encounter  her.  It  was  Andy's  doing. 

"Does  An — does  the  boy,"  he  hurried,  "really  want    .    .     " 

"To  go  ?"  It  was  just  the  way  she  used  always  to  help  him 
out,  and  yet  it  was  now  with  an  air  of  weariness  that  he  found 
painful.  "He  does  want  to.  I  didn't  know  he  could  care  so 
much  for  anything." 

Blunston  noticed  that  she  mentioned  her  son  by  the  per 
sonal  pronoun  rather  than  by  his  Christian  name. 


32  VICTORIOUS 

"His  whole  heart's  just  set  on  it,"  she  added. 

Blunston  had  never  dreamed  of  taking  a  messenger;  he 
didn't  need  a  messenger! 

"Of  course,"  Andy's  mother  continued,  "he'll  worry  ahout 
me;  but  he  made  arrangements  before — I  mean  when  he  vol 
unteered — and  he  will  now.  I  didn't  know  he  was  thinking 
of  going  this  way — but  I  knew  he  meant  to  go  somehow." 

"You — you  might  lose  him,"  said  Blunston.  After  all,  the 
fact  had  to  be  voiced. 

He  was  thinking  of  her.  She  had  said  little  of  herself;  she 
had  said  nothing  of  their  past  affection  for  each  other.  He 
should  have  remained  in  Americus.  There  was  something 
above  love,  in  love  there  was  something  above  desire  and  pride : 
there  was  obligation.  Sarah  couldn't  stand  the  blows,  still  less 
the  slow  attritions,  which  some  women  could  stand.  He  might 
have  softened  these,  and  without  her  knowing  it — oh,  in  a 
thousand  ways !  And  that  she  could  not  stand  those  blows  and 
attritions — yes,  he  had  known  that  when  he  went  away.  "In 
the  life  of  each,  there  ought  to  be  something  that  is  bigger 
than  anything  else":  for  such  a  something  what  chance  had 
Sarah  Tollens  had? 

"I  know" — her  head  was  bent,  in  the  darkness  her  hands 
seemed  to  be  plucking  at  her  skirt — "and  yet  his  heart  is  set 
on  it,  and,  you  see,  he's  done  a  lot  for  me — everything — and 
I've  not  been  able  to  do  anything  for  him  and — well,  letting 
him  go  is  about  all  I've  got  to  give  him." 

Blunston  raised  his  hat  and  turned  abruptly  down  the  street. 

"I'll  see  what  I  can  do,"  he  told  her  as  he  left. 

VI 

After  an  uncomfortable  night  at  the  Hotel  Americus,  for 
staying  at  which  his  cousins  were  properly  affronted,  he  called 
Washington  by  telephone  and  learned  that  the  rule  concern 
ing  accredited  war-correspondents'  messengers  had  been  sus 
pended. 

He  went  over  to  the  old  house  and  sat,  for  a  long  time,  un 
der  the  Yellow  Spanish  cherry-tree,  where  his  cousins  could 


VICTOEIOUS  33 

not  see  him.  Once  he  took  from,  a  pocket  his  copy  of  yester 
day's  Spy  and  studied  carefully  the  account  of  the  fire  and 
the  note  of  Annie  Brumbaugh's  birthday-party.  He  thought 
of  years  ago  and  of  last  night,  and  though  he  saw  no  reason 
for  altering  his  opinion  that  Sarah  Tollens  must  forever  re 
main  Sarah  Brown — as,  indeed,  there  was  none — he  saw  with 
equal  clarity  his  responsibility  therefor.  Then  he  walked  over 
to  the  Spy  office. 

Andy  was  alone.  The  boy  was  sprawled  over  a  littered  table, 
his  red  head  close  to  a  pile  of  pulp-paper ;  he  was  coatless,  and 
his  shirt-sleeves  were  held  up  by  a  pair  of  contrivances  of  pink 
elastic  that  looked  like  a  woman's  garters. 

"Andy,"  said  Blunston,  and  he  said  the  name  without  an 
effort. 

The  boy  jumped  up.    A  joyful  grin  bisected  his  face. 

"I  want  you  to  come  out  with  me/'  the  elder  man  explained, 
"for  a  walk." 

Andy  cast  a  troubled  eye  at  his  manuscript: 

"I'm  just  writing  a  local;  I'm  afraid  I  can't  leave  right 
away." 

"I'll  fix  it  with  the  colonel,"  said  Blunston.  "That  story 
of  the  surprise-party,  never  do  it  again.  .  .  ." 

Andy's  eyes  were  large. 

"But  I  meant  to  tell  you  last  night,"  he  said:  "that's  the 
way  they  like  it." 

".  .  .  going  to  be  another  'they/ "  said  Blunston.  "The 
fire-story  was  you.  ...  Of  course,  your  literary  ideals  are 
all  wrong,  but  I  believe  I  can  teach.  .  .  .  Never  mind  about 
a  week's  notice.  .  .  .  You  won't  have  to  write  any  more  lo 
cals  unless  you  don't  .  .  ." 

Andy  began  to  tremble: 

"You're  going  to  take  me?" 

"No.     Take  you  for  a  walk.    .    .    .    Come  on." 

Andy,  struggling  into  his  coat,  amazedly  followed  Blunston 
into  Elm  Avenue.  They  strode  up  the  hill. 

Minnie  Taylor  was  coming  down  it.  On  her  head  she  car 
ried  her  father's  last  week's  earnings  in  the  shape  of  a  new  hat, 
terribly  and  wonderfully  made.  She  was  still  angry  at  Andy 


34  VICTORIOUS 

for  wanting  to  go  to  war  when  she  preferred  his  attentions 
from  a  close  corner,  so  she  began  to  harden  her  pretty  plump 
face  and  turned  up  her  pert  nose;  but,  when  she  saw  him  in 
the  company  of  a  stranger  in  uniform,  her  manner  shifted. 

"Hello,  Andy/'  she  said.  She  slowed  her  walk  just  enough 
to  make  it  proper  for  him  to  stop  and  present  his  friend,  yet 
not  enough  to  make  it  certain  that  this  was  what  she  desired. 

"Hello,  Minnie,"  said  Andy.  He  bowed  with  an  air  perhaps 
tinged  by  a  new  superiority  and,  still  with  that  air,  passed  on. 

"I  have  to  be  personal,"  said  Blunston  when,  in  silence, 
they  had  gone  a  dozen  paces.  "That,  for  instance  ..."  A 
jerk  of  his  head  indicated  the  back  of  the  discomfited  Minnie. 
"Er — any  love-affairs,  or  ...  ?" 

"Not  on  your  life,"  Andy  declared.  But  he  had  a  con 
science;  it  produced  a  hurried  qualification:  "Of  course,  I 
like  Minnie  —  that  girl  who  just  passed  —  but  we're  on  the 
outs  now." 

"Why?" 

"She — well,  she  doesn't  understand  what  a  man's  duties  are 
in  war-time." 

"Oh,"  said  Blunston.  His  quiet  glimpse  of  her  had  im 
pressed  him  with  the  fact  that  Minnie,  like  most  pretty  women 
of  brief  understanding,  understood  at  least  what  she  wanted. 
"You  meant  to  marry  .  .  .You  thought  of  that?  I  have 
to  ask.  ..." 

Andy  blushed.  He  dared  not  guess  what  all  this  was  lead 
ing  up  to,  but  the  priest  must  answer  the  bishop,  and  the  re 
porter  must  not  deny  the  war-correspondent.  He  had  never 
admired  Blunston's  news-articles  so  much  as  those  of  Owen 
Evans,  but  he  admitted  Blunston's  greatness. 

"I  might,"  he  conscientiously  admitted,  "but  it'd  all  be  long 
from  now.  There's  my  mother,  you  see.  And  besides" — his 
determined  purpose  was  uppermost — "I've  got  to  get  to  this 
war  somehow." 

This  purpose  'was  uppermost.  That,  Blunston  reflected, 
was  to  be  considered. 

"About  your  mother   ...    If  you  went   .    .   ." 

"If  you  took  me?" 


VICTOEIOUS  35 

"If  you  went  away." 

The  boy  was  ready  there.  Of  course,  he  would  worry :  his 
mother  was  not  the  sort  to  do  well  alone  in  the  world.  But 
he  wouldn't  worry  over  finances.  Kepler,  the  other  reporter, 
would  board  at  the  Brown  house,  and  Andy  had  another 
boarder  in  view,  with  a  third  in  the  offing.  Then — Mrs. 
Brown  had  never  considered  applying  for  it  until  Andy,  vol 
unteering  for  the  army,  had  bethought  himself  of  it,  had 
looked  the  matter  up  and,  as  he  said,  "put  it  through" — there 
was  her  pension  as  a  Spanish- American  War  widow. 

Blunston  turned  away  from  that.  They  had  gone  into  one 
of  the  quieter  streets,  and  there  the  older  man  directed,  with 
some  skill,  Andy's  talk  to  his  chosen  work. 

A  half-hour's  conversation  sufficed.  The  boy  was  on  fire 
with  his  passion :  he  wanted  to  help  win  the  war ! 

"And  it  would  help,  wouldn't  it,  Mr.  Blunston?  To  be  a 
war-correspondent's  messenger,  I  mean.  I  don't  mean  that's 
not  a  lot  for  me  to  get,  but  I  mean — I  mean,  since  I  can't 
fight,  it  would  be  kind  of  helping  the  big  men  like  you  with 
the — what  do  you  call  them? — Lines  of  communication? — 
between  the  folks  at  home  and  the  boys  over  there." 

Blunston  said  yes. 

"Just  what  does  a  messenger  do,  Mr.  Blunston  ?" 

That  he  wanted  to  be  a  correspondent's  messenger  before 
he  knew  the  nature  of  a  messenger's  duties:  this,  to  the  cor 
respondent,  was  one  of  the  highest  proofs  of  Andy's  ability. 

Blunston  stopped.  He  fronted  the  boy,  put  his  hands  on 
Andy's  shoulders,  looked  him  hard  in  the  eyes.  Andy  re 
turned  the  gaze,  questioning,  hoping,  but  unquavering. 

"You're  sure?"  said  Blunston. 

"Of  myself  ?"  Blunston  noted  that  Andy  had  now  perfectly 
acquired  his  mother's  trick  of  finishing  the  elder  man's  sen 
tences.  "Oh,  yes,  sir — I  mean :  'oh,  yes' !" 

They  were  silent  for  a  moment,  eyes  on  eyes.    Then : 

"It's  rough." 

"I  can  stand  that." 

"Dull.    .    .     » 

"I  don't  mind." 


36  VICTOKIOUS 

"Dangerous.    .   .    " 

"I  know." 

"You've  got  to  want  to  do  your  duty  .  .  .  to  be  a  soldier 
...  to  help  your  papers'  public  .  .  .  the  American  peo 
ple  ...  your  country,  more  than  anything  else  .  .  . 
than  comfort,  promotion,  life  .  .  ." 

Blunston's  face  was  very  grave;  Andy's  was  as  it  had  been 
in  the  radiance  from  the  doorway  of  his  home  last  night 

"I  will,"  he  said:  "I  do." 

It  was  in  the  nature  of  an  oath. 

Blunston's  hands  gripped  Andy's  shoulders,  then  dropped. 

"Now  go  away,"  he  said.  "I'll  see  you  at  your  house  at  six 
o'clock." 

VII 

Blunston's  contract  with  his  newspapers  was  not  for  any 
cabled  reports;  for  immediate  news  they  were  depending  on 
the  large  news-services.  Blunston  was  to  send  descriptive  ma 
terial  by  post — descriptive  material  of  the  sort  with  which  the 
crowded  wires  could  not  well  be  burdened.  He  went  now, 
however,  to  the  telephone-booth  at  the  hotel  and,  for  several 
hours,  annoyed  the  commercial  travelers  by  preempting  the 
telephone  for  long-distance  calls. 

Then  he  went  to  Lawyer  Dickey's  office. 

"The  key  to  the  old  house,"  he  said.   .   . 

He  was  going  to  live  in  the  old  house. 

He  was  going  to  resign  his  dearest  ambition.  He  was  going 
to  teach  Andy  as  much  about  journalism  as  it  was  possible 
to  teach  him  in  such  time  as  remained.  He  was  even  going 
to  make  a  compromise  with  veracity.  The  syndicate  could  not 
afford  to  provide  him  with  an  assistant,  the  War  Department 
would  not  let  him  have  a  messenger;  but  the  State  Depart 
ment  would  issue  Andy  a  passport,  and  the  adjutant-general 
would  withdraw  the  credentials  given  to  Andrew  Blunston 
and  issue  them  to  Andrew  Brown. 

For  reasons  that  he  did  not  altogether  care  to  go  into, 
Blunston  was  making  his  great  sacrifice.  Andy  was  to  go 
to  France — a  war-correspondent. 


VICTORIOUS  37 

Andy  was  to  be  told  that  Blunston's  hard  work  abroad  had 
worn  him  out  and  that  he  was  too  ill  to  return  to  France. 
Andy  was  to  address  all  his  manuscripts  to  Blunston,  who 
would  rewrite  them  and  transmit  them  to  their  destination. 
In  order  to  avoid  local  gossip,  the  proposed  service  to  Phila 
delphia  and  New  York  papers  was  to  be  dropped,  so  that  no 
body  in  Americus  would  wonder  how  a  man  resident  there 
could  be  writing  from  the  Western  Front.  It  was  all,  when 
it  came  to  the  doing,  immensely  simple. 

A  casuist  might,  of  course,  have  raised  objections,  but 
Blunston  found  himself  quite  void  of  casuistry.  Andy  did 
not  want  the  fame  of  signing  what  he  wrote — did  not  yet 
deserve  it.  There  was  a  larger  debt  to  be  satisfied  than  any 
of  mere  literal  honesty :  there  was  an  inherited  judgment-note 
that  the  new  generation  held  against  the  old. 

Andy,  painful  as  it  may  be  to  record  this,  bowed  to  his 
superior's  decision  upon  the  point  of  professional  ethics.  He 
accepted  it,  to  be  frank,  with  sheer  joy.  He  was  still  some 
what  timid  about  his  abilities,  and  he  was  genuinely  sorry 
that  ill-health  had  overtaken  Blunston;  but  the  joy  of  youth 
is  ever  ready  to  assume  that  maturity,  having  had  its  fling, 
pants  with  anxiety  to  make  way  for  its  successor. 

He  had  prepared  himself  for  an  heroic  scene  of  manly 
brevity  and  restraint  when  he  should  break  the  news  to  his 
mother ;  but  Sarah  Brown  took  it  with  only  a  slight  tighten 
ing  of  the  lines  about  her  mouth. 

''You'll  be  needing  extra  socks,"  she  said — "warm  ones. 
They  say  it's  cold  over  there.  And  I'll  knit  you  a  sweater." 
Before  he  went,  she  would  bake  some  of  the  Dover-cakes  that 
he  loved  and  surreptitiously  slip  them  into  the  bedding-roll 
that  he  already  talked  of  buying. 

Everybody  else — for  he  had  to  tell  everybody — seemed  de 
lighted,  though  not  so  bewildered  as  Andy,  by  his  good  for 
tune.  The  girls  at  the  Fashion  Emporium  clubbed  together 
and  presented  him  with  a  necktie,  which  he  would  be  unable 
to  wear  under  the  strangling,  straight  collar  of  his  uniform, 
when  his  uniform  came.  The  Racket-Store  clerks  gave  him  a 
half-dozen  cambric  handkerchiefs  with  pink  borders.  The 


38  YICTOEIOUS 

Blunston  girls'  father,  who  had  fought  through  the  Civil  War 
and  been  in  Libby,  slapped  him  on  the  back  and  said  he 
wished  they  could  change  places.  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  patron 
ized  him  kindly.  Colonel  Eskessen  was  shiningly  proud  of 
him  and  promised  to  send  him  the  Spy  regularly.  The  town 
expected  him  to  do  great  things ;  it  said  so ;  it  shook  his  hand. 

Everybody,  that  is,  but  Minnie. 

"I  think  it's  mean  of  you/'  she  said.  "Just  risking  your 
life  for  nothing !  Why,  you're  not  even  going  to  fight !"  In 
her  china-blue  eyes  there  was  the  moisture  of  chagrin. 

He  was  too  busy  to  be  disconcerted  by  Minnie.  Although 
his  patron  intended  to  rewrite  all  that  Andy  wrote,  it  was 
necessary  that  Andy  be  taught  whatever  was  possible,  and 
Blunston  shrewdly  believed  in  the  boy.  Sometimes  they  took 
a  canoe  and  guided  themselves  on  the  rushing  currents  and 
between  the  blue-gray  rocks  of  the  river,  where  the  trees  of 
clustering  islands  met  overhead,  and  landed  at  one  of  the 
islands  and  studied  there.  Once  they  walked  into  the  hills 
behind  the  town,  where,  though  the  dogwood  was  no  longer 
in  bloom,  yet  on  her  dark  canopy  the  chestnut  still  strung 
ochre  plumes,  and  wild  roses  shone  among  the  creeping  win- 
tergreen.  For  hours  on  end,  the  veteran  dissected  the  war- 
correspondence  in  the  New  York  papers,  explained  the  "lines 
of  the  armies,"  commanded  the  recruit  to  write  column  upon 
column  for  immediate  destruction,  and  poured  forth  scraps 
of  advice  perpetually  punctuated  with  the  order  "Get  this  in 
black-and-white." 

Came  the  marvelous  morning  when  the  postman  delivered 
a  registered  envelope  containing  the  coveted  "Accredited 
Correspondent's  Pass"  —  Andy's  credentials.  It  was  dated 
boldly  from  "War  Department,  Washington,  15.  C." : 

"The  bearer,  Mr.  Andrew  McKinley  Brown"  (Andy  was 
timid  about  his  middle-name  when  anybody  was  around,  but 
here  it  was,  a  typewriter  having  trimly  tucked  it  into  a  wait 
ing  blank  space  on  the  printed  form) — "Mr.  Andrew  McKin 
ley  Brown,  whose  photograph  and  signature  are  hereto  at 
tached,  is  hereby  accredited  to  the  Commanding  General, 


VICTORIOUS  39 

American  Expedition  in  France,  United  States  Army,  with 
permission  to  accompany  said  troops,  subject  to  the  Regula 
tions  governing  Correspondents  with  Troops  in  the  Field  and 
the  orders  of  the  commander  of  said  troops. 

"This  pass  entitles  the  correspondent  to  passage  on  mili 
tary  railways  and,  when  accommodations  are  available,  on 
Army  transports,  with  the  privileges  of  a  commissioned  offi 
cer.  .  .  ." 

The  name  of  the  secretary  of  war  was  printed  below  it; 
it  was  marked  "Official"  and  signed  by  the  adjutant-gen 
eral's  own  hand;  and  it  contained  a  blank  line  for  the  sig 
nature  of  the  commanding  general  to  be  placed  there  on 
Andy's  arrival  in  France. 

Lest  Washington  might  change  its  mind,  Andy,  with  trem 
bling  hand,  signed  immediately  at  the  place  reserved  for 
"Correspondent's  signature."  He  went  out  and  had  his  pho 
tograph  taken — a  most  unflattering,  shiny  photograph — and 
would  not  leave  the  photographer's  shop  until  the  print  had 
been  made  and  pasted  on  the  spot  designated  for  its  recep 
tion. 

Andy,  who  had  been  thrice  to  Doncaster  for  feverish  "try- 
ings-on"  of  his  uniform,  now  donned  it  immediately  and, 
walking  down  Elm  Avenue,  decided  never  to  take  it  off.  It 
was  veritable  khaki,  and  an  officer's  in  everything  but  the  in 
signia.  The  buttons  bore  the  American  eagle  and  bound  their 
proud  prisoner  to  the  army ;  around  the  upper  portion  of  the 
left  sleeve  was  a  green  brassard  bearing  a  red  C, — which 
marked  Him  as  a  real  war-correspondent  accredited  to  the  A. 
E.  F.  Andy  felt  a  throb  of  patriotism  in  his  very  throat,  of 
responsibility  to  the  vast  American  newspaper-reading  public 
in  his  pounding  heart. 

And  then — the  telegram. 

It  was  not  much.  It  was  only  "Tuesday,  10  A..  M."  and 
the  name  of  some  clerk  that  meant  nothing.  The  day  was 
fixed,  even  the  hour. 


40  VICTORIOUS 

VIII 

He  went  to  see  Minnie,  but  Minnie  had  gone  to  the  annual 
"outing"  of  the  Four-Leaf  Social.  Well,  it  didn't  matter! 
At  the  Spy  office,  Colonel  Eskessen  said  "God  bless  you," 
and  Kepler  told  him  he'd  make  good;  and  Lawyer  Dickey 
came  in — oh,  by  the  merest  chance ! — and  blew  his  nose. 

Blunston  was  to  meet  him  at  the  station,  go  to  New  York 
with  him,  and  see  him  sail.  The  porter  from  the  Hotel  Amer- 
icus  drove  up  for  Andy's  bag  and  bedding-roll  and  said  he 
wouldn't  take  any  money  for  the  job. 

Andy  ran  up-stairs  for  a  last  look  at  his  attic-bedroom,  at 
the  thumbed  school-books  and  the  other  long-treasured  vol 
umes  in  the  hanging  bookcase ;  at  his  precious  paints  and  at 
the  dance-programs  strung  across  the  mirror.  He  had  put 
away  childish  things. 

Then  he  found  himself  down-stairs  standing  in  the  door 
way  alone  with  his  mother.  He  glowed  with  excited  expect 
ancy,  but,  as  he  glanced  back  at  the  little  living-room  with 
its  marble-top  center-table  bearing  the  family-Bible,  at  the 
chandelier  he  had  recently  laboriously  gilded,  which  now  con 
trasted  too  brightly  with  the  worn  chairs  descended  from  the 
days  of  the  Tollenses'  glory,  at  the  lambrequined  mantel 
piece  on  which  stood,  beside  a  new  photograph  of  Andy  in 
uniform,  a  photograph  of  Andy  in  his  first  baby-clothes — as 
he  looked  at  these  and  at  the  tired  face  of  his  mother,  some 
thing  clutched  at  his  soul. 

She  was  standing  there,  a  gaunt  figure,  whittled  thin  by 
the  years.  There  was  more  gray  than  he  had  before  noticed 
in  her  black  hair,  more  lines  in  her  sallow  face. 

"Now  then,  Andy,"  she  said,  "don't  run  any  risks  you  don't 
need  to.  I  know  you'll  not  shirk  any  you  oughtn't  to  shirk. 
Don't  worry  about  me :  I'm  all  right.  I'm  not  going  to  worry 
about  you  if  I  can  help  it,  and  I'm  not  as  much  afraid  of 
those  TJ-boats  as  some  people.  Write  once  a  week,  and — " 
she  put  out  her  long  thin  arms  awkwardly — "be  a  good  boy." 

She  had  spoken  between  appreciable  pauses.  At  each  pause 
he  wanted  to  interrupt;  first,  he  wanted  to  say  some  of  the 


VICTORIOUS  41 

fine  encouraging  things  he  had  thought  of  for  this  occasion; 
next,  he  wanted  just  to  say  anything  that  would  tell  her  of 
that  which  was  clutching  at  his  soul.  But  he  only  flung  him 
self  into  her  arms  and  kissed  her  and,  looking  down  into  her 
dry  eyes,  whispered  chokingly : 

"All  right,  mother.  I  love  you,  mother.  Good-by." 
Without  turning,  he  ran  down  the  steps  and  into  the  street. 
He  heard  the  cheerful  song  of  a  yellow  warbler  from  the 
garden  behind  the  house.  Because  she  held  them  back  until 
she  had  closed  the  door  between  them,  he  did  not  hear  his 
mother's  sobs. 

IX 

On  his  part,  Andy  found  that  the  pain  of  farewell,  if  it 
did  not  immediately  end,  was  at  least  soon  suspended.  When 
they  are  not  short,  the  griefs  of  youth  are  only  recurrent. 
He  was  a  boy  being  pushed  toward  the  goal  of  his  desire:  it 
would  be  too  much  to  expect  that  all  his  thoughts  should  re 
main  behind  him. 

He  had  been  in  Philadelphia,  but  to  "New  York  this  was 
his  first  visit.  He  went  about  in  a  daze,  overcome  by  it.  Only 
the  consciousness  of  his  uniformed  glory  kept  his  head  steady. 
Broadway,  Fifth  Avenue — all  that  had  been,  theretofore,  but 
magic  names:  "It's  simply  great,"  said  Andy. 

He  listened  for  every  word  that  he  could  salvage  from  the 
colliding  voices  of  passers-by:  "An'  he  said  .  .  .  an' 
then  she  said  .  .  ." — that  was  Fifth  Avenue ;  "He's  wonder 
ful  ...  she's  an  artist  .  .  ." — that  was  Broadway;  "But, 
my  dear,  it  never  gels  you  anywhere" — this  was  Forty-second 
Street.  At  a  shop-counter  a  too-showily  dressed  girl  was 
proudly  calling  the  attention  of  her  attendant  saleswoman 
to  another  purchaser,  well  but  quietly  garbed :  "See  that  lady 
over  there?  Ain't  she  grand?  She's  my  gentleman  friend's 
wife."  Andy  observed  that,  in  their  peculiar  drawl,  all  the 
women  were  talking  of  men,  and  all  the  men  of  women. 

In  the  taxi-cabs  that  Blunston  shoved  him  into  and  out 
of,  beside  the  counters  on  which  his  cicerone  rapped  for  more 
speedy  attention,  across  the  white  napery  and  shining  silver 


42  VICTORIOUS 

of  a  roof -garden  dinner — a  New  York  dinner  in  a  New  York 
fairyland  roof-garden! — Andy's  companion  poured  out  his 
fragmentary,  but  continuous,  advice. 

He  had  written  his  charge  a  score  of  letters  of  introduc 
tion:  to  French  politicians,  American  soldiers,  cosmopolitan 
journalists :  "Here's  one  to  a  Chicago  man  .  .  .  he's  .  *  . 
and  named  McGregor  .  .  .  somewhere  on  a  matter  of  con 
tracts  of  some  sort." 

Andy  heard  and  understood  and  agreed,  but  his  spirits 
were  high  with  New  York  and  his  heart  already  aboard  the 
waiting  transport.  He  snatched  only  stray  phrases,  when  he 
had  to  be  alert  if  he  were  to  offer  satisfactory  repartee. 

".  .  .  and  don't  make  it  a  rule  to  end  every  sentence  with 
a  preposition,"  said  Blunston,  "because  .  .  ." 

"Is  there  any  rule  against  ending  one  with  a  conjunction  ?" 
asked  Andy. 

Blunston's  keen  eyes  narrowed  suspiciously.  "How  can 
you?" 

The  laughing  boy  had  his  example  ready:  "Please  move 
your  chair  away  from  that  electric-fan  which  you  are  sitting 
between  me  and." 

"We  shall  be  late  for  the  theater   .    ,    ."  said  Blunston. 


That  was  a  joyful  little  comedy  to  which  he  took  his  pro 
tege  on  the  eve  of  Andy's  departure  for  the  war.  Like  most 
of  our  American-made  comedies,  it  was  very  nearly  a  farce. 
This  was  why  Blunston — who  had  seen  it  twice  and  knew 
the  players  personally  and  did  not  like  it — had  selected  it 
for  Andy's  vision.  He  wanted  to  give  the  lad  a  cheerful  go 
ing.  New  though  a  New  York  theater  was  to  the  boy,  Blun 
ston's  roof-garden  talk  had  succeeded  at  last  in  lessening 
Andy's  attention  to  the  things  about  him  and  in  directing  it 
more  and  more  toward  the  things  ahead.  Of  these  he  was 
thinking  when,  as  they  took  their  far-forward  seats  and  faced 
a  stage  set  as  a  drawing-room  with  French  windows  opening 
on  a  moonlit  garden,  some  one  entered  from  those  windows. 


VICTORIOUS  43 

The  r61e  was  secondary — unpunctual  as  Blunston  and  his 
friend  were,  it  was  still  too  early  to  permit  the  entrance  of 
the  star — and  the  first  words  spoken  were  trite  enough;  but, 
at  the  sight  of  her  and  the  sound  of  her  low  voice,  Andy's 
fast-dwindling  timidity;  vanished  altogether.  He  gripped 
Blunston's  arm: 

"I  can't  see  my  program.  Who's  that?" 

His  neighbor  looked  from  one  side  of  the  stage  to  the 
other.  "The  man  in  the  check — " 

"No,  no.  That  girl!" 

"The  one  at  the  table?  That's  Mildred—" 

"I  don't  mean  her.  I  mean  the — the  beautiful  one,"  gulped 
Andy :  "the  one  that  just  came  on." 

He  saw  a  graceful,  shining,  girlish  creature,  her  glistening 
hair  in  a  heavy  knot  above  her  creamy  neck,  her  eyes  like 
the  skies  of  morning,  her  lips  like  berries  from  the  garden 
whence  she  came.  Radiant,  but  radiant  in  the  simplicity  of 
things  immortal,  she  moved  with  the  clean-limbed  grace  of  a 
dryad  and  spoke  with  the  low  clear  voice  of  one  among  the 
oak-groves  about  Tithorea.  Awake,  he  had  never  before  seen 
such  poise;  he  could  not  at  once  believe  the  reality  of  what 
he  saw. 

"Oh,  that"  Blunston  was  saying:  "that's  Sylvia  Raeburn. 
She  is  rather  pretty." 

Rather  pretty !  She  had  come  nearer  to  the  footlights,  and 
Andy  saw  how,  for  all  her  rippling  hair  was  golden,  her 
arched  eyebrows  were  well-defined,  and  how,  though  her  eyes 
were  frank,  they  were  but  the  wistful  surface  of  a  pool  too 
deep  for  fathoming. 

"Southern,"  said  Blunston,  a.  .  .  no  sign  of  it  in  her 
speech  .  .  .  well  liked  ...  a  nice  straight  sort  of  person, 
only  never  anything  but  a  second  .  .  .  satisfactory  actress, 
never  a  great  .  .  .  won't  set  the  North  River  on  .  .  ." 

The  rectitude  of  her  body,  the  health  of  her  soul,  were 
recorded  in  the  clarity  of  her  glance  and  the  unstudied  surety 
of  her  rare  gestures.  Andy  was  very  young,  and  this  was  a 
perilous  picture  of  youth  for  youth  to  gaze  on. 

The  play   progressed.    An  entr'acte  followed.    Blunston 


44  VICTORIOUS 

drew  some  lesson  from  the  fact  that  American  readers  had 
seen  the  news  of  the  doom  of  Przemysl  before  he  and  the 
other  correspondents,  twenty  miles  away  from  that  city,  and 
the  millions  of  Germany  and  Austria,  so  much  as  guessed 
that  the  place  was  soon  to  fall.  .  .  . 

Then  she  was  in  the  garden  that  had  before  been  glimpsed 
only  through  the  French  windows  of  the  drawing-room.  She 
brought  to  the  painted  scene  the  true  perfume  of  lilac  and 
syringa;  she  inhaled  the  hot  atmosphere  of  the  theater,  she 
gave  forth  the  sweet  breath  of  flowers  in  the  open  air.  Andy's 
impression  of  her  came  in  volleys :  her  body  was  harmonious ; 
she  had  a  trick  of  puckering  her  beautiful  brows  that  was 
not  a  frown  from  within,  but  the  shadow  of  a  cloud  of  per 
plexity,  evoked  by  her  childlike  wonder  at  a  world  less  lovely 
than  herself. 

Blunston  was  tired.  He  hoped  that  he  was  doing  the  right 
thing  in  sending  Andy  abroad :  the  right  thing  for  that  Sarah 
Tollens  who  could  never  be  again,  for  himself  and  for  the 
something  that  he  had  come  to  see  as  the  most  important  of 
all.  On  the  stage,  the  star  was  prancing  through  a  boisterous 
love-scene.  Andy's  eyes,  he  noted,  were  not  on  her,  but  they 
were  bright.  Blunston  hoped  that  the  boy  was  not  thinking 
too  much  about  Minnie  Taylor. 

The  star  had  a  fall  in  that  boisterous  love-scene.  She  fell 
over  a  flower-pot  and  made  a  limping  exit. 

The  opening  of  the  next  act  was  Miss  Raeburn's.  Evening 
had  fallen  on  the  garden;  the  dryad  was  as  if  she  had  not 
long  since  leaped  ashore  after  a  plunge  in  the  Cephissus ;  dew 
seemed  to  sparkle  on  her  curling  lashes,  and  there  was  star 
light  in  her  hair. 

Between  adolescence  and  maturity  lies  a  period,  all  too 
brief,  when  the  individual,  still  "appareled  in  celestial  light," 
may  try  the  unknown  fires  of  manhood  and  not  be  burned; 
it  is  the  period  when  beauty  is  at  once  an  element  in  itself 
and  yet  more  beautiful  because  of  what  it  expresses.  Beauty, 
the  wonder  holy  and  elusive,  is  just  around  the  next  corner. 
She  has  left,  as  you  pursue  her,  a  trail  of  rosebuds;  on  the 
light  breeze  is  still  the  music  of  her  ever-flying  feet ;  a  little 


VICTOKIOUS  45 

nearer,  and  you  will  hear  her  singing  that  she  is  youth  and 
wistful  gladness,  that  she  is  high  adventure  and  lofty  duty 
— that  she  is  Springtime  and  God. 

But  Andy  was  to  see  no  more  of  Sylvia  Raeburn  to-night. 
The  manager  appeared  before  the  curtain  and  announced 
that  the  boisterous  star  had  sprained  her  knee  and  could  not 
go  on.  The  performance  must  stop. 

Blunston,  as  they  filed  out,  said  he  was  sorry  that  Andy's 
enjoyment  had  been  curtailed.  Andy  scarcely  heard  him. 

Earlier  in  the  day,  when  they  arrived  there,  the  gilt  grandi 
osity  of  the  hotel-entrance  had  impressed  him,  the  odors  of 
so  many  Egyptian  cigarettes,  the  fashionably-dressed  women 
that  crowded  the  elevator  and  powdered  their  unconcerned 
noses  before  its  mirrors,  the  impassive  bell-boys  and  the 
waiters  carrying  late  breakfast-trays  or  early  cocktails.  Now 
all  this  left  him  cold.  Then  he  was  going  out  to  help  in  the 
war,  with  War  Department  credentials  that  made  him  almost 
an  officer;  now  he  was  going,  but  with  the  added  inspiration 
of  the  vision  beautiful. 

Blunston  came  into  his  room  to  smoke  a  pipe  before  going 
to  bed.  He  took  up  the  subject  of  censorship:  other  things 
being  equal,  a  correspondent's  work  depended  on  his  ability 
to  be  tactful  with  the  censor;  to  antagonize  the  censor  for 
any  minor  cause  or  personal  quarrel  was  to  end  one's  useful 
ness  ;  but  if,  as  there  was  small  chance  it  would,  any  difference 
arose  over  a  vital  principle,  then  an  honorable  man  could  but 
do  his  duty  and  face  the  consequences.  Andy  remembered  it 
afterward. 

That  night  he  dreamed  of  his  modern  Jeanne  d'Arc  and 
saw  her  in  the  likeness  of  Sylvia  Eaeburn.  He  knew  it  wasn't 
love  he  felt:  she  was  too  remote  for  that.  Yet  he  knew  it 
wasn't  only  adoration.  He  had  always  seen  his  Jeanne  as 
much  the  Sylvia  of  this  evening,  only  now  the  details  were 
clearer.  The  wonder  holy  and  elusive,  the  wistful  gladness, 
the  high  adventure  and  the  lofty  duty :  in  soul  and  body  she 
was  what  the  historic  Jeanne  must  have  been,  what  to-night's 
Sylvia  must  be ;  as  brave  as  the  one,  as  beautiful  as  the  other, 
and  like  the  Lily  of  Quito  pure,  "un  Us  d'une  beaut  e  admira- 


r46  VICTORIOUS 

We"  which,  he  had  read  in  the  Lives  of  the  Saints — for  he 
had  read  nearly  every  dusty  book  in  the  Americus  Public  Li 
brary — was  watered  by  the  blood  of  Marianne  de  Jesus. 


XI 


Andy  met  Blunston  in  the  hotel's  lobby  next  morning. 

"Why,"  said  the  lad,  "I  hardly  knew  you:  you  look  so 
different." 

Blunston  was  in  mufti.   He  smiled  wryly. 

"I've  no  more  use  for  a  uniform,"  said  he. 

He  rode  with  Andy  in  a  taxi  to  the  pier,  a  Blunston  whose 
weather-beaten  face  was  rather  drawn  and  very  thoughtful, 
yet  a  Blunston  that  gave  advice,  and  sometime  shyly  indirect 
encouragement,  to  the  last.  Andy  said  next  to  nothing,  but 
his  companion  fought  the  silence  that  strove  to  settle  upon 
them. 

"It's  the  people  at  home  you're  writing  for,"  he  said. 
"They  don't  want  to  know  strategy  .  .  .  generals  .  .  . 
but  .  .  .  Did  I  say  they  want  to  know  what  it's  all  like, 
even  the  dull  deadly  grind  of  it  ?  .  .  .  If  you  can  do  that, 
it's  worth  while.  These  soldiers  can't  express  themselves. 
But  you  .  .  .  You're  part  of  a  letter-home  for  the  whole 
army." 

And  again,  apparently  apropos  of  nothing: 

"Correspondents'  casualties  will  go  up  if  they  give  us  a 
just  chance,  as  they  should,  but  never  heavy.  So  far  .  .  . 
Needham  .  .  .  and  then  Jones  on  the  Lusitaniia  .  .  ." 

He  put  a  hand  on  that  shoulder  of  Andy  nearest  him  and 
gripped  it. 

"Democracy,"  he  said :  "that's  why  we're  in  this  war.  Keep 
it  in  your  head  and  keep  faith  with  it." 

The  taxi  sped  down  a  large  street  or  bumped  over  a  small 
one.  Now  they  would  leap  forward,  and  again  come  to  a 
jolting  halt,  all  at  the  command  of  some  traffic-policeman 
unseen  by  the  occupants  of  the  cab. 

They  were  at  the  pier-gates.     Together  they  shouldered 


"VICTORIOUS  47 

Andy's  bundles  and  passed  into  the  resounding  shadows  of 
the  pier. 

The  street  was  crowded  with  sightseers,  roofs  of  the  sur 
rounding  warehouses  black  with  them. 

"Wonder  the  mayor  doesn't  come  with  a  brass-band  .  .  . 
present  a  bouquet  .  .  ."  grumbled  Blunston. 

Bales,  boxes,  a  few  porters  with  barrows,  officers  seeking 
lost  luggage,  military-police  in  khaki,  private  policemen  in 
gray  uniforms,  detectives  in  plain-clothes,  customs-house 
men :  into  a  crowd  of  these  Andy  and  Blunston  plunged.  Far 
ahead  were  three  squares  of  light  out  of  which  three  gang 
planks  rose  to  the  still  invisible  ship:  up  there,  out  of  the 
darkness,  shuffled  endless  lines  of  brown  soldiery. 

A  port-officer  at  a  high  desk  demanded  Andy's  passport, 
marked  it  and  referred  its  bearer  to  an  embarkation-officer 
thirty  yards  nearer  the  central  gangplank. 

"Eight  in  there,"  that  officer  said  to  Andy.  "Stand  aside, 
men!"  he  called  to  the  trudging  soldiers.  To  Blunston  he 
said :  "You  can't  go  aboard  with  him.  I'll  see  that  his  bag 
gage  gets  on." 

Blunston  handed  one  of  the  soldiers  some  money  and  with 
it  that  portion  of  Andy's  impedimenta  he  had  been  carrying. 

"Andy,  never  trust  the  military-arrangements  with  your 
luggage,  if  you  can  yourself  look  out  for  .  .  .  Don't  lose 
sight  of  that  soldier !"  He  stuffed  a  package  into  the  pocket 
of  Andy's  blouse.  "I  shan't  wait  on  the  pier  ...  too  dull." 
He  took  the  boy's  hand  and  pressed  it  hard.  "Remember  to 
cable  if  you  get  into  any  trouble,  or  need  .  .  .  I'll  keep  you 
posted  about  home.  Good-by.  Good  luck." 

He  pushed  Andy  into  the  mounting  line  of  soldiers.  When, 
having  slowly  climbed  the  long  ascent  to  the  deck,  the  boy 
looked  back,  Blunston  had  disappeared. 

Andy  took  out  the  package  and  opened  it.  It  contained 
three  new  one-hundred-dollar  bills  and  a  note-book  carefully 
written  and  indexed  in  Blunston's  precise  hand.  The  book 
proved  to  be  a  record  of  all  the  verbal  instructions  Andy's 
friend  had  given  him  during  the  past  few  days ;  it  concluded 
with  this  "Envoy": 


48  VICTOBIOUS 

"Never  forget  that  you  have  a  duty  to  the  army,  to  the 
public,  to  your  country.  If  you  happen  on  any  staff-secrets, 
don't  betray  them  for  the  sake  of  a  beat.  If  you  happen  on 
something  that  the  public  ought  to  know,  don't  suppress  it 
for  anybody.  If  you  happen  on  anything  of  value  to  your 
country,  remember  that  that  takes  precedence  of  anything 
else. 

"Get  the  big  'feature'  in  the  first  paragraph,  then  elaborate 
and  end  with  a  bang;  don't  split  infinitives;  don't  end  sen 
tences  with  prepositions  (or  conjunctions!)  when  you  can 
avoid  it  without  strain.  Go  slow,  but  don't  go  to  sleep. 

"Kemember,  however  much  your  profession  is  abused  by 
those  outside  it  or  inside,  it  is  a  profession  to  be  proud  of. 
In  your  particular  job,  leave  generals  to  the  cable-services; 
you  are  the  voice  of  the  man  in  the  ranks.  Could  you  ask 
better? 

"Keep  a  cool  head  and  a  clean  heart. 

"And  God  bless  you ! 

"ANDEEW  BLUNSTON." 

The  reference  to  conjunctions  showed  that  the  writer  had 
been  working  on  these  notes  last  night,  while  Andy  dreamed. 

XII 

That  was  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning.  At  five  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon,  the  transport  sailed. 


CHAPTER  III 

HOW  ANDY  ENTERED  DANGERS  BEYOND  THE  DANGER-ZONE ;  AND 
OF  A  PACE  AT  A  CAR- WINDOW 

IT  WAS  with  a  high  head  that  Andy  entered  the  white- 
walled  room  in  the  rue  de  Constantine  which  was  the  chief 
censor's  office. 

Heaps  of  printed  forms  and  boxes  of  stationery  were  piled 
on  the  bare  floor.  A  few  collapsible  chairs  stood  about.  From 
the  top  of  the  single  table,  Andy  was  confronted  by  the  soles 
of  a  pair  of  spurred  boots. 

He  hesitated  a  moment  and  then  stepped  forward.  Two 
legs  ran  out  of  the  boots  and  down  to  a  tilted  chair ;  up  from 
the  chair  rose  a  narrow-chested  figure,  on  the  sloping  shoul 
ders  of  which  were  the  insignia  of  a  first-lieutenant.*  He  had 
a  cadaverous  face;  his  dark  hair  was  thick,  a  mass  of  stiff 
curly  tendrils;  his  protruding  eyes  dull.  Evidently  he  had 
breakfasted  well,  for  he  sat  picking  his  teeth  in  unspeculative 
calm. 

"Good  morning,"  said  Andy. 

The  dental  operations  were  not  at  once  discontinued  in  fa 
vor  of  conversation.  Andy  felt  the  flush  that  crept  over  his 
freckled  face. 

"I've  come  to  report,  sir,"  he  said.  "I'm  an  accredited  cor 
respondent." 

Very  slowly  the  lieutenant  removed  his  feet  from  the  table. 
He  spat  out  the  latest  discoveries  of  the  toothpick,  but  the  pick 
itself  he  only  shifted  to  a  corner  of  his  thin  lips. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "you're  not  the  only  one." 

Andy's  flush  deepened.  "My  orders,"  said  he,  "are  to  re 
port  to  the  chief  censor.  That's  Major  Curtis." 

*  In  justice  to  individual  censors,  the  author  wishes  to  state  that 
the  man  Garcia  is  wholly  a  fictitious  character  intended  only  to 
typify  the  evils  of  censorship. 

49 


50  VICTORIOUS 

"Oh,  you  don't  have  to  see  him.    I'm  in  charge." 

"Very  well,  Mr. " 

"Lieutenant  Garcia." 

Andy  drew  from  its  breast-pocket  his  precious  papers. 

"Here  are  my  credentials,  Mr.  Garcia." 

"Lieutenant  Garcia,"  that  officer  corrected. 

"Fin  sorry,"  said  Andy;  he  was  ashamed  of  his  mistake.  "I 
thought  lieutenants  were  called  Mister." 

"Not  in  the  A.  E.  F.  they're  not,"  Garcia  responded.  He 
accorded  Andy's  treasure  the  favor  of  a  cursory  glance. 
"Well,"  he  asked,  "what  do  you  want  ?" — and  tossed  the  paper 
back  to  his  visitor. 

Now  Andy  was  only  amazed :  "Why,  I — the  first  thing,  I 
guess,  is  to  have  these  credentials  forwarded  for  the  signature 
of  the  commanding  general.  That  is  the  first  thing,  isn't  it  ?" 

Lieutenant  Garcia  gave  the  innocent  paper  another  glance, 
but  this  time  it  was  a  glance  of  amusement.  "Take  it  away. 
We're  not  bothering  with  those  souvenirs  from  Washington." 

Andy  picked  up  his  credentials  as  a  boy  might  lift  from  a 
road  the  body  of  his  pet  dog  that  a  scornful  motor  has  killed. 

"Then  what  is  the  next  thing  ?"  he  asked.  He  tried  to  speak 
respectfully,  but  he  could  not  then  add  to  his  question  the 
"sir"  of  the  conscious  subordinate. 

Garcia  produced  a  paper  of  his  own.  "This,"  he  said.  "It's 
the  correspondent's  agreement.  You  needn't  take  up  my  time 
reading  it.  It's  just  a  form.  Sign  it  for  us  to  file :  that's  all 
you've  got  to  do." 

Told  not  to  read  it,  Andy  obeyed.  This  lieutenant  made 
him  feel  much  younger  than  he  felt  when  he  left  Aincrk-u^. 
Andy  shifted  from  one  foot  to  the  other:  "Is  that  all?" 

"Yes.  Come  here  whenever  you  want  a  pass  to  the  Amer 
ican  camp.  We'll  send  over  to  the  provost  marshal's  for  it. 
It'll  take  about  a  day." 

"I  thought  my  credentials — "  began  Andy. 

Garcia  made  a  gesture  of  impatience.  "I've  got  more  trou 
ble  with  you  correspondents  than  a  dog  with  fleas,"  he  said. 
"You  reporters  all  think  you  can  come  and  go  around  the 
camp  just  as  you  like.  Well,  take  it  from  me,  you  can't. 


VICTORIOUS  51 

We're  no  Brand  Whitlocks.  "What  we  want  you  fellows  to  do's 
to  get  down  there  when  we're  ready  for  you  and  write  stuff 
that'll  get  behind  the  doughboys — and  that'll  keep  the  people 
back  home  in  a  good  humor." 

"  I  thought  there  mightn't  be  much  to  write  just  yet,"  said 
Andy. 

"  Then  make  it,"  said  Garcia.  "Make  it,  damn  it,  make  it! 
Look  here:  The  papers  of  you  accredited  men  have  put  up  a 
thousand  dollars  for  each  of  you  with  the  army,  and  we're 
using  that  to  pay  for  your  seats  in  the  reporters'  automobiles : 
it's  ten  dollars  a  day  apiece,  and  you're  charged  whether  you 
use  the  car  or  don't.  I  advise  you  to  go  down  to  the  camp  and 
get  your  money's  worth." 

"Doesn't  that  thousand  go  toward  our  food  and  lodging 
down  there?"  gasped  Andy. 

"You  bet  your  sweet  life  it  don't.  The  officers  aren't  going 
to  have  you  i'ellows  messing  with  them.  You'll  live  at  the  lo 
cal  hotels — and  they'll  make  you  pay  cash." 

Another  correspondent,  a  fat  smiling  man  with  bright  black 
eyes,  was  waiting  his  turn  in  the  anteroom. 

"Just  arrived?"  asked  the  smiling  man,  as  Andy,  deeply 
flushing,  closed  the  door  between  Garcia  and  himself. 

Andy  couldn't  speak.    He  nodded. 

"Well,  I  suppose  Garcia  told  you  to  get  behind  the  dough 
boys." 

Andy  nodded  again. 

"He  tells  that  to  every  new  man,"  said  the  stout  correspond 
ent.  "He's  got  to:  you  see,  the  artillery  and  aviation  don't 
exist.  Did  he  tell  you  he'd  charge  you  a  ten-spot  a  day 
whether  you  were  at  the  camp  or  not?  He  tells  us  all  that. 
Forget  it."  The  speaker  slapped  Andy  kindly  on  the  back. 
"Don't  take  Louis  Garcia  too  hard.  He's  a  squirt." 

II 

Andy's  FrencH  was  faulty.  There  was  some  confusion 
about  his  ticket,  and  he  started  incorrectly  for  the  American 
camp.  One  day  found  him  getting  off  the  wrong  train  to 


52  VICTORIOUS 

change  for  the  right  one  at  a  village  vastly  different  from 
those  in  which  his  country  was  preparing  for  its  great  effort. 
The  name  of  this  village  was  Mirande-la-Faloise. 

Somebody  had  told  him  that  the  Germans  had  been  here, 
but  if  that  was  so,  they  could  not  have  hurried  away;  indeed 
the  little  place  could  not  have  been  under  fire,  for  nowhere, 
except  in  his  home  town,  had  Andy  seen  anything  more  peace 
ful.  Twin  rows  of  white  cottages,  clean  and  thrifty,  bor 
dered  the  single  street  down  which,  during  his  half-hour's 
wait,  the  American  sauntered.  At  the  farther  end  beyond  the 
church  with  its  Gothic  tower  and  medieval  clock,  there  stood 
a  quite  formidable  house,  an  old  inn  that  seemed  to  date  from 
centuries  gone  by  and  that  displayed  for  sign  the  lilies  of 
French  royalty ;  and  behind  this,  long  meadows  fell  away  to  a 
shady  woodland  thick  with  oaks  that  must  have  been  full- 
grown  when  Gaston  conspired  with  Montmorency  and  Eich- 
elieu  wrecked  the  hopes  of  "Monsieur  le  Grand."  Andy, 
though  he  had  read  a  little  of  those  events,  looked,  rather, 
with  a  sort  of  homesickness  at  the  fertile  fields  that,  divided 
and  subdivided,  stretched  beyond  the  Inn  of  the  Lilies.  The 
perfumed  air  sighed  contentment;  a  little  creek,  purling 
through  the  meadows,  sang  a  cradle-song.  The  only  signs  of 
war  were  a  few  British  Tommies  dozing  in  shady  doorways; 
but  one  of  these,  between  naps,  told  Andy  that  the  street  was 
empty  because  the  population,  which  had  fled  before  the 
enemy,  was  as  yet  forbidden  to  return. 

Mirande-la-Faloise:  Andy  liked  the  name.  He  liked  the 
place ;  he  thought  that  he  would  remember  it. 

in 

On  the  evening  of  his  arrival  at  one  of  those  villages  in  the 
broad  stretch  of  country  called  the  American  camp,  Andy, 
making  busy  notes  by  candlelight,  felt  that  he  had  seen  more 
than  he  could  ever  remember  and  much  more  than,  when  he 
returned  to  Paris — for  residence  at  the  camp  was  impossible 
so  long  as  the  promise  of  food  and  lodging  was  not  kept — he 
could  ever  write. 


VICTOKIOUS 


53 


There  was  the  series  of  villages,  all  alike.    Crooked  streets 
full  of  mud  when  it  rained,  and  of  dust  when  it  didn't. 
Groups  of  American  soldiers  playing  with  French  children; 
others  in  the  high  fever  of  the  newcomer's  passion  for  souve 
nir-purchasing ;  rows  of  decadent  cottages.    On  the  doors  of 


the  best  houses  were  rude  signs : 


MAJOR  POMEROY, 

CAPTAIN  SCHULTZ. 


On  the  doors  of  the  stables,  which  appeared  to  be  mere 
wings  of  the  houses,  were  other  signs : 


SQT.  BACOPOULOS 
& 

16  MEN. 


Every  cottage  boasted  its  elbowing  manure-pile;  the  larger 
the  pile,  the  richer  the  householder — and  there  was  much  vul 
gar  display  of  wealth.  The  public  fountain  was  presided  over 
by  the  statue  of  a  saint,  but  about  the  sculptured  feet  a 
medical-officer  had  strung  the  warning:  "Unfit  for  Drinking 
Purposes." 

He  saw  the  rigors  of  training,  the  apparently  spasmodic 
efforts  to  teach  the  new  trade  of  war.  Marches,  musketry- 
drills,  machine-gun  drills,  trench-digging,  the  education  in 
trench-attack  and  trench-defense :  Andy  saw  it  all. 

He  was  living  at  a  village-inn,  dirty  and  expensive.  Here, 
on  the  first  night,  as  he  climbed  the  rickety  stairs  to  bed, 
Andy  was  brought  to  a  pause  by  a  distant  rumbling.  A  sol 
dier  was  passing  him. 

"We  must  be  going  to  have  a  thunder-storm,"  said  Andy. 


54  VICTORIOUS 

The  soldier  laughed  shortly.  "Those  are  the  guns,"  he  said ; 
"yon  can  often  hear  them  if  the  wind's  right/' 

Dull  and  far-away  the  sound  was,  but  without  cessation  it 
continued  through  the  night.  It  invaded  Andy's  sleep. 

Some  of  the  correspondents  lived  in  this  inn.  They  were 
a  little  jealous  of  every  newcomer,  but  Andy's  frankness  and 
enthusiasm  won  his  way.  "That  kid"  they  called  him  at  first 
and  were  inclined  to  sneer  at  his  "greenness." 

Of  course,  he  was  to  cable  nothing,  and  that  was  a  stigma : 

"How  much  you  sending  a  day  ?"  the  newest  to  the  business 
asked  him. 

"How  do  you  mean  <how  much'  ?"  asked  innocent  Andy. 

"  "How  do  I  mean  ?' ''  The  mimic  laughed ;  one  or  two  of 
his  comrades,  standing  by,  snickered  shamefacedly.  "I  mean 
how  many  words  are  you  to  cable  ?" 

"None,"  said  Andy. 

"Help!"  groaned  the  young  veteran.  "Here's  another 
journalist." 

Nevertheless,  they  ended  by  liking  him,  and  affectionately 
changed  "that  kid"  to  "the  kid."  Andy  folded  to  his  breast 
the  wonder  of  being  a  war-correspondent  for  the  first  time. 

He  took  trips  far  away  from  the  training-camp  to  supply- 
bases  in  the  making,  to  hospitals  and  great  works  that  were  to 
be.  There,  in  the  words  of  the  men  that  showed  him  about, 
words  that  the  correspondents  of  the  Paris  newspapers  flung 
broadcast  to  their  hungry  countrymen,  he  found  the  spirit  of 
rush  and  ingenuity  and  bigness  that  was  America.  Peeping 
through  a  single  large  gun  and  watching  its  greased  spirals 
vanish  in  the  shining  disk  of  the  mouth,  he  heard  an  officer 
say :  "We're  going  to  have  a  thousand  of  these  next  month." 
His  first  prisoners  he  saw  laying  the  main  of  a  water-system ; 
he  heard  that  highways  were  to  be  widened  to  accommodate 
camions  four-abreast. 

We  were  to  use  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  miles  of  four- 
inch  water-pipe.  We  were  erecting  a  pair  of  salvage-depots 
to  repair  clothing,  rifles,  motorcycles,  automobiles,  field- 
glasses,  watches,  rubber-boots,  harness;  when  completed,  they 
be  the  largest  in  the  world.  Here,  at  Bordeaux,  a  city 


VICTOKIOUS  55 

was  building  beside  a  city:  the  capacity  of  the  old  harbor 
would  be  fifty  times  multiplied,  ten  times  as  many  ships  could 
be  unloaded  as  formerly  and  three  times  as  many  docked ;  the 
eight  hundred  and  seventy  switches  in  the  railroad-yard  would 
control  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  miles  of  new  track  there, 
and  from  these  would  be  sent  forth  nine  hundred  and  sixty 
standardized  locomotives  and  thirty  thousand  freight-cars 
from  home;  to  supply  purified  water,  there  would  be  con 
structed  reservoirs  that  would  give  six  million  gallons  a  day. 

"We'll  need  one  hundred  and  sixty-two  million  cubic  feet 
of  filling  to  bring  the  ground  of  the  yards  to  a  proper  level," 
an  engineer  told  Andy.  "And  just  you  watch  us  throw  it  in." 

Of  its  sort,  there  would  be  nothing  on  earth  the  size  of  the 
clearing-house  that  was  to  go  up  midway  along  the  lines  of 
communication :  a  mile  broad  and  nearly  seven  long,  four  and 
a  half  million  feet  of  covered  storage  capacity  and  ten  million 
of  open ;  enough  war  material  could  be  housed  there  to  supply 
a  million  men  for  thirty  days.  Not  far  away,  there  was 
planned  a  plant  for  the  mere  assemblage  of  aeroplanes,  not 
even  their  repairing,  where  twenty  thousand  men  would  be 
employed. 

"Twenty-five  thousand  planes,"  said  an  inspector.  "That 
is  what  the  secretary  of  war  has  promised,  and  he  says  the 
factories  back  home  are  ahead  of  schedule." 

Could  it  all  really  be  accomplished,  a  hovering  British  cor 
respondent  wondered. 

"Bet  your  life  it  can,"  said  the  inspector.  "America  always 
starts  with  an  auger,  never  with  a  gimlet." 

"But  sometimes,"  Ferlet,  a  thin,  excitable  French  reporter, 
hazarded,  when  Andy  made  shift  to  translate  this  statement, 
"sometimes  to  start  well  a  gimlet  is  necessary." 

As  for  Andy,  he  was  drunk  with  the  sense  of  immensity. 
What  were  the  slights  of  officers,  what  even  the  drawbacks  of 
the  confused  training-camp,  in  such  a  scale  as  this  on  which 
the  great  American  effort  was  proceeding? 


56  VICTOKIOUS 

IV 

Andy  had  secured  a  single  table  in  an  obscure  corner  of  the 
general  dining-room.  He  was  waited  on  by  a  beautiful,  petti- 
coated  panther,  a  dark,  broad-shouldered,  full-bosomed  girl 
that  steered  with  flexuous  turns  of  her  body  a  burdened  course 
through  the  clutter  of  servants  and  officers:  she  walked  like 
a  queen  and  dominated  the  entire  inn.  Andy  heard  somebody 
address  her  as  Leonie  and  ask,  in  easy  French,  for  a  place.  He 
looked  up  and  recognized  his  friend  of  the  censor's  anteroom. 

"Well,  well/'  said  the  new  arrival'.  He  came  over  and  shook 
hands.  To  Andy's  delighted  wonder,  he  said  his  name  was 
Owen  Evans.  "I  thought  I'd  run  down  here  for  a  day  or  two, 
but  there  doesn't  seem  to  be  room,  even  to  eat." 

Andy  scarce  dared  offer  such  a  dignitary  a  place  opposite 
him,  but  he  managed  it,  and  Evans  was  soon  gorging.  While 
he  gorged,  he  talked,  mostly  of  his  latest  grievance.  He  had 
been  recently  to  Italy  and  complained  of  the  Italians'  in 
sistence  on  correspondents  securing  certificates  of  registration. 

"But  our  trouble's  going  to  be  with  our  own  people,"  said 
Evans.  "Some  day  my  great-grandson  will  be  flunked  at 
school  if  he  doesn't  know  stuff  that  our  censors  have  killed." 

He  left  Evans,  who  had  some  writing  to  do,  and  passed 
through  the  bar,  a  hall  and  into  the  narrow,  low-eeilinged 
room  beyond.  The  shutters  were  closed,  to  let  no  light  out 
and  no  air  in.  The  place  was  filled  with  the  glare  of  lamps 
and  the  mixture  of  fumes  from  oil  and  imperfectly  digested 
alcohol.  There  was  a  great  crowd  there,  too ;  not  of  French 
peasants,  who  drink  their  light  wines  liberally  diluted  by 
water,  but  men  that  drank  too  much  liquor  and  drank  it  neat ; 
girls,  no  Delilahs,  nor  yet  one  that  would  have  received  so 
much  as  a  glance  of  pity  in  a  larger  village,  but  women  against 
contaminating  contact  with  whom  a  cocotte  of  Paris  would 
have  withdrawn  her  passing  skirts.  There  was  no  music,  how 
ever  low ;  no  games,  however  wild ;  nothing  but  a  few  men  in 
uniform,  the  tilted  bottle  and  the  reeking  girls. 

Andy  hurried  into  the  street.  He  walked  through  the  vil 
lage  and  down  the  long  road  beyond. 


VICTOKIOUS  57 

Moonlight — "Somewhere  in  France."  From  far  away  that 
low  thunder  which  was  the  guns;  over  there,  beyond  those 
dimly  silhouetted  hills  and  across  valleys  to  Andy  invisible, 
iron  mouths  were  vomiting  a  deafening  Niagara  of  death; 
here,  about  him,  only  that  distant  rumble  hinted  just  then  of 
war ;  a  train  in  a  tunnel,  perhaps ;  breakers  on  a  rocky  coast. 
Moonlight,  and  the  straight  white  road,  shining  silver  under 
the  bordering  rows  of  Lombardy  poplars;  behind  him,  the 
tiny  thatched  hamlet. 

In  a  field  a  few  steps  off  that  road,  rose  a  big  black  build 
ing  with  a  peaked  roof.  Andy  went  into  it. 

It  was  amazingly  full  of  men — men  at  tables,  writing  let 
ters  ;  men  reading  magazines ;  checker-playing  men ;  but  Kem- 
brandt  every  one,  whose  faces  were  lighted  by  candles  planted 
on  rails  along  the  walls.  At  the  farther  end  a  group  was 
gathered  about  an  older  man,  who  played  the  piano  and  sang 
with  them. 

It  was  Old  Black  Joe.  These  men  were  a  bit  of  the  Ameri 
can  Army,  and  this  hut  a  bit  of  the  American  Y.  M.  C.  A. 

In  a  quiet  room  at  the  back  of  the  hut,  an  Association- 
worker,  who  had  been  teaching  French  to  a  class  of  American 
soldiers,  was  now  teaching  them  French  history.  In  a  corner, 
behind  a  counter,  another  worker  was  serving  the  canteen. 
The  bulletin-board  announced  a  track-meet  for  the  next  day 
and  a  baseball  game  for  the  day  to  follow;  there  was  to  be  a 
variety-show  on  Saturday.  Close  beside  the  bulletin-board 
hung  a  large  placard  with  this  staring  legend : 


You  PROMISED  MOTHER  A  LETTER: 
WRITE  IT  Now ! 


The  hut  had  been  full  when  Andy  entered  it.  Before  he 
left,  it  was  overflowing.  Soldiers  hung  in  at  the  windows. 
Some  failed  to  force  an  entrance  through  their  comrades  at 
the  door  or  even  to  squeeze  a  head  among  the  heads  that 
crowded  the  window-sills ;  they  had  to  go  away. 


58 


yiCTOKIOUS 


He  had  feared  that  the  task  of  chronicling  the  American 
endeavor  in  France  would  numb  his  fingers  before  ever  he  sat 
down  to  his  little  portable  typewriter ;  yet  no  sooner  was  he  in 
Paris,  and  in  his  green-curtained  attic-workroom — Blunston 
had  reengaged  by  cable  his  own  old  headquarters  in  the  Palais 
Royal  for  his  protege — than  he  fell  upon  his  work  and  found 
his  enthusiasm  performing  it.  The  disorder  of  his  impres 
sions,  which,  it  had  occurred  to  him,  might  be  the  reflection 
of  a  disorder  among  the  things  whence  they  were  derived — 
that  was  gone,  and  order  obtained:  so,  he  said,  would  chaos 
cease  in  our  spheres  of  military  activity.  Andy  wrote. 

He  stopped  only  because  a  trick  of  his  fancy  bade  him  open 
his  bedding-roll,  which  he  had  not  opened  on  the  transport. 
He  found  there  and  ate  the  Dover-cakes  that  were  very  stale, 
but  that  he  must  be  able  truthfully  to  tell  his  mother  he  had 
eaten. 

His  mind  whirled  back  to  the  camp  and  all  he  had  seen. 
He  started  writing  again.  The  people  at  home  hadn't  the 
faintest  idea  of  what  stupendous  things  were  in  progress ! 

He  drew  up  this  list,  and  elaborated : 

THE  AMERICAN  MILITARY  EFFORT  WILL  CONSTRUCT: 

The  biggest  staff  training-school 

The  biggest  system  of  military- 
equipment  warehouses 

The  biggest  military  seaport  base 

The  biggest  base  hospital 

The  biggest  locomotive  round  house 

The  biggest  field  bakery  system  J*    IN  THE  WORLD  ! 

The  biggest  automobile  storagehouse 

The  biggest  gasoline  storage  plant 

The  biggest  cold  storage  plant 

The  biggest  junk  shop 

The  (next  to  the)  biggest  aviator 
training  camp 


yiCTOKIOUS  59 

It  was  afternoon  when  he  began.  He  stopped  once  to  light 
his  lamp  and  once  to  fill  it  before  he  had  finished.  Sometime 
during  his  work  there  came  something  that  sounded  like  the 
shriek  of  the  transport's  whistle;  later  there  were  crashes  in 
the  street  that  seemed  to  his  subconsciousness  bumping  coal- 
cars  when  a  train  was  being  inexpertly  "made-up"  in  the 
Americus  railroad-yards.  As,  at  last,  he  finished,  he  heard 
the  call  of  a  bugle,  ringing  fresh,  singularly  joyous. 

Later,  he  learned  that  this  was  the  berloque,  the  "All  Clear" 
signal.  He  had  written  through  an  air-raid. 


VI 


From  his  workshop  window,  Andy  could  see  the  length  of 
the  historic  gardens  of  the  Palais  Eoyal.  Children  sailing 
their  toy-boats  in  the  pool  of  the  fountain;  old  men  and 
young  blesses  dozing  on  the  benches  under  the  sun-filtering 
trees ;  lovers  lunching  at  Vef  our's  below  the  merry  sounds  of 
military  wedding-parties  in  the  grandes  salles  and  strolling 
arm-in-arm  along  the  pillared  gale-ries.  He  revelled  in  the 
repetition  of  names  concerning  the  history  of  which  his 
knowledge  was  the  haziest.  Eichelieu  had  begun  the  build 
ings  as  the  Palais-Cardinal,  died  there  and  left  them  to  the 
thirteenth  Louis;  Anne  of  Austria — Andy  knew  his  Three 
Musketeers — lived  in  them,  and  he  that  was  to  be  the  grand 
inonarque  and  his  unhappy  brother;  the  great  Mansart,  to 
whom  all  Paris  is  a  monument,  enlarged  the  place,  and  in 
Mansart's  halls  the  Eegent  held  his  scandalous  revels.  Here 
John  Law  blew  the  Mississippi  Bubble;  Mirabeau  knew  the 
Palais  Eoyal  with  Madame  Nahra;  while  the  gamesters  won 
and  lost  in  its  salles  de  jeu,  Philippe  Egalite  wooed,  above 
stairs,  the  Comtesse  de  Buffon  or  the  English  Mrs.  Elliott; 
Lamartine  must  here  have  nursed  his  tenderness  for  Elvire 
the  Creole. 

There  were  evenings  when  the  moonlight  brought  to  Andy 
visions  of  a  Jeanne  d'Arc  whose  hair  gleamed  and  whose 
eyes  were  starry  waters  too  deep  for  fathoming.  There  was 


60  VICTOEIOUS 

one  evening  on  which  this  inceptor  in  letters  even  attempted 
poetry  and  began: 

When  all  that  hair  is  turning  gray 

Which  now  is  Tuscan  gold, 
When  faint  asciculations  say 

That  you  are  growing  old — 

He  never  went  on  with  it :  he  couldn't.  He  wanted  to  make 
some  use  of  "asciculations"  because  he  had  just  that  day  dis 
covered  the  word. 

Yet  this  night  his  sleep  conjured  the  vision  that  his  pen 
could  not  ordain.  She  was  standing  between  the  green  hang 
ings  of  the  window  with  the  moon  full  upon  her;  it  gleamed 
from  her  corselet,  it  shone  on  her  casque  and  on  the  tendrils 
of  her  yellow  hair  that,  at  her  temples,  escaped  below  the 
vizor ;  reflected  from  the  curtains,  it  gave  her  face  the  appear 
ance  of  a  face  chiseled  out  of  ice. 

She  did  not  speak,  but  Andy  conceived  himself  possessed 
of  a  reckless  eloquence.  Feverishly  convinced,  he  voiced  the 
meter  of  the  heartbeats  that  he  could  feel  at  his  tongue's  tip 
and  in  his  finger-ends.  The  sense  of  miracle  subjugated  him. 
He  wanted  to  ask  her  what  she  would  of  him,  but  what  he 
said  was  that  in  the  crystal  of  her  soul  he  saw  all  innocence 
and  sweetness  and  truth.  With  unstudied  surety,  she  extended 
toward  him  a  hand  that  was  like  moonshine  upon  water.  He 
wondered  if  he  would  dare  to  kiss  it;  he  felt  that  he  would 
count  life  well  lost  were  death  the  price  of  such  homage-giving. 
He  knelt  to  kiss  her  hand,  reverently — she  looked  at  him  and 
beyond  him  with  a  slight  contraction  of  the  dusky  lashes  that 
was  not  a  frown,  but  the  faintest  shadow  of  a  cloud  of  per 
plexity  as  at  the  half-realized  spectacle,  and  wholly  unbe 
lievable,  of  a  world  less  lovely  than  herself ;  she  looked  beyond 
him  thus ;  and  then,  still  silent,  before  his  lips  had  touched  her 
hand,  she  dissolved  into  the  ancient  moonlight. 

The  lad  that  dreamed  such  things  was  freckled,  cheerful 
Andy.  Andrew  McKinley  Brown.  Andy,  the  son  of  Sarah, 
late  reporter  for  the  Americus,  Pa.,  Daily  Spy! 


VICTOKIOUS  61 

He  had  seen  notable  people,  had  eaten  luncheon — at  the 
next  to  the  last  of  six  tables,  to  be  sure,  but  as  a  guest,  and 
no  mere  chronicler — at  the  Hotel  Palais  d'Orsay,  had  been 
to  teas  in  a  one-button  afternoon  coat  that  he  had  to  buy  at  a 
Parisian  tailor's,  and  to  dinners  in  evening-clothes.  He  was 
taking  French  lessons;  whole  Gallic  phrases  came  trippingly 
from  his  tongue.  He  had  seen  all  of  Paris  except  that  side 
which  Blunston  and  Colonel  Eskessen  and  all  the  people  back 
home — including  his  mother,  had  she  known  of  its  existence 
— would  not  have  wanted  him  to  see. 

The  autumn  was  approaching.  It  came  on  stealthily.  It 
played  its  hand  like  an  expert  whist-player  that  knows  enough 
tricks  will  certainly  be  his  if  only  he  makes  the  proper  leads. 
As  it  came  on,  so,  Andy  said,  would  come  forward  the  might 
of  America. 

He  was  confirmed  in  this  by  some  of  the  phrases  in  a 
chance  conversation  with  an  officer  of  the  Chasseurs  d'Alpins, 
whom  he  met  at  a  diplomatic  dejeuner. 

"What  do  you  think  of  our  men  ?"  asked  Andy.  "Beally,  I 
mean/'  he  hastened  to  add.  "I  won't  publish  it ;  I  just  want 
to  know." 

Andy's  honest  brown  eyes  and  smiling  face  could  generally 
gain  him  a  Frenchman's  confidence,  but  this  black-bearded 
Frenchman  with  the  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  on  his 
coat,  although  he  was  fresh  from  instructing  American  troops, 
had  little  that  he  cared  to  conceal. 

"They  are  almost  as  good  as  our  own  men/'  said  he.  "Your 
private  soldier  is  quick  to  learn,  and  lean  and  hard  and,  oh, 
very  serious!  I  believe  that  you  must  all  take  your  sports 
like  the  English;  and  this  business  of  fighting,  you  set  about 
it  as  seriously  as  your  men  of  Wall  Street  go  about  their  gam 
bling." 

"And  what  about  our  officers  ?"  urged  Andy. 

''Ah,"  he  said,  "there  is  so  much  more  to  learn  for  an  offi 
cer  than  for  a  simple  soldier.  But  I  am  glad  for  them  both 
that  you  will  have  the  Grand  Keview  to-morrow." 


62!  VICTORIOUS 

VII 

He  had  been  at  the  camp  yesterday  and  there  met  officers 
of  the  American  Army's  press-division ;  it  was  to  be  expected 
that  they  must  tell  any  correspondent  in  good  standing  of  an 
erent  that  would  interest  the  public  at  home;  but  none  of 
them  had  mentioned  the  review.  This  morning,  in  Paris, 
Andy,  when  he  returned  the  pass  that  he  had  taken  to  camp, 
had  had  to  see  Lieutenant  Garcia;  Garcia  had  made  no  men 
tion  of  the  review. 

Could  the  French  officer  be  mistaken?  A  general  review 
of  the  A.  E.  F.  might  indicate  that  the  staff  was  thinking, 
six  months  after  it  went  to  war,  of  going  to  fight.  In  any 
case,  a  grand  review  would  be  news,  and  Andy  must  lose  no 
chance  of  describing  it. 

He  looked  at  his  watch.  The  last  train  toward  the  Ameri 
can  camp  left  in  an  hour.  He  bolted  from  the  dejeuner  forth 
with  and  plunged  into  the  nearest  Metro  station.  He  was 
bound  for  the  Hotel  Ste.  Anne,  whither  the  censorship  offices 
had  been  removed,  in  order  to  secure  a  pass  at  once. 

He  stood  on  the  subway-platform,  stamping  impatiently. 
The  afternoon  crowd  was  beginning  to  go  homeward,  and  the 
station  was  filled.  It  seemed  to  Andy  that  he  had  to  wait  an 
unconscionable  time. 

Came  an  approaching  roar.  He  leaned  over  the  edge  of  the 
platform:  the  train  that  was  coming  was  bound  the  wrong 
way. 

It  banged  into  the  station.  Across  the  track-bottomed 
chasm  that  intervened  between  that  train  and  him,  Andy 
hurled  his  anger. 

He  saw  a  crowd  push  aboard.  The  train  began  to  pull  away. 
It  gained  speed.  Window  after  lighted  window  passed  before 
his  flaming  eyes.  At  one  he  caught  sight  of  a  person  looking 
across  the  narrow  chasm. 

It  was  the  face  of  a  girl — of  a  superb  creature  whose  glis 
tening  hair  was  drawn  into  heavy  coils  above  her  creamy 
neck,  whose  eyes  were  like  the  skies  of  morning  and  whose 
lips  were  like  bitter  berries.  The  thing  happened  so  quickly 


VICTOKIOUS  63 

that  Andy's  expression  had  not  changed  from  that  of  im 
potent  anger  at  the  fact  of  this  not  being  his  train.  The 
direct,  clear-eyed  gaze  of  the  girl  seemed  to  see  this.  Utterly 
unconscious  of  herself,  she  smiled.  The  train  shot  ahead. 
Some  inward  perplexity  asserted  itself:  the  girl's  even  brows 
puckered,  not  into  a  frown,  but  as  if  in  the  shadow  of  a  re 
current  cloud. 

The  train  was  gulped  by  the  tunnel. 

Andy  wheeled,  fought  his  way  through  the  crowd  toward 
the  subway's  exit:  that  girl  was  Sylvia  Eaeburn.  It  couldn't 
be,  but  it  was. 

Andy  madly  resolved  to  get  a  taxi  to  the  next  station  down 
the  line.  What  were  all  these  dolts  in  his  path  that  they 
seemed  blind  to  the  vision  vouchsafed  him?  He  would  over 
take  that  train — he — 

He  stopped.  Such  a  course  was  impossible.  He  could  not 
overtake  the  train.  The  whirlpool  of  the  city  had  shown  her 
him  and  flung  her  far  away.  Then  there  was  the  review;  his 
duty  lay  there — and  his  last  chance  for  the  day  was  now  only 
fifty  minutes  distant,  at  the  Gare  de  1'Est. 

He  was  half-way  up  the  exit  steps.   He  turned  back. 

He  went  to  the  Hotel  Ste.  Anne.  Nobody  was  there  but  a 
military-clerk  on  the  desk  before  whom  lay  a  wire-basket. 
Andy  saw  in  that  basket  the  pass  he  had  that  morning  re 
turned.  It  had  not  yet  been  handed  over  to  the  provost-mar 
shal's  office  for  cancellation. 

"I  want  this,"  said  Andy.  "It  was  a  mistake,  my  turning 
it  in  this  morning." 

Before  the  clerk  could  determine  whether  or  not  it  was 
his  part  to  protest,  Andy  and  the  pass  had  left  the  hotel  to 
gether. 


CHAPTER  IV 

OF  A  GRACIOUS  GRAFTER;  OF  A  FRENCH  MAID  AND  A  DRAFTED 
PRO-GERMAN,  AND  OF  TWO  PERSONS  UNDER  A  PARISIAN 
MOON;  YET,  WITHAL,  OF  THE  ORDER  AND  DISORDER  OF  WAR 

AT  FIRST  his  tour  along  the  corridors  of  the  Express  left 
him  with  the  belief  that  every  carriage  was  full.  French  offi 
cers,  American  Red  Cross  workers  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretaries 
seemed  to  occupy  all  the  space.  Then,  as  Andy  retraced  his 
steps,  he  came  upon  a  compartment  that  offered  some  small 
hope.  There  were  in  it  four  men  wearing  the  brilliant  in 
signia  of  the  etat-majeur,  one  civilian  and  the  one  civilian's 
huge  suit-case.  The  civilian  filled  a  seat  by  the  window  and 
bulged  over  it;  the  suit-case  filled  the  seat  beside  him  and 
bulged  over  that. 

Andy  resolved  to  have  the  suit-case  placed  on  the  overhead 
rack,  where  it  belonged,  and  to  take  for  his  own  the  seat  it 
now  occupied.  He  entered  the  carriage. 

Although  the  day  was  warm,  the  squat  figure  of  the  civilian 
was  swathed  to  its  waist  in  a  bright  plaid  steamer-rug.  A 
heavy  overcoat  rose  above  the  rug.  Two  plump  gloved  hands, 
coming  out  of  fur-edged  sleeves,  held  an  old  copy  of  the  New 
York  Times  before  the  face,  and  above  the  newspaper  Andy 
could  see  only  a  thicket  of  gray  hair  surmounted  by  a  gay 
tweed  cap. 

"May  I  have  this  seat?"  asked  Andy:  the  man  must  be  a 
fellow-countryman. 

The  civilian's  grotesquely  short  arms  drew  the  New  York 
Times  toward  his  lap,  leaving  free  to  Andy's  view  hazel  eyes 
overtopping  dark  pouches  of  fat,  an  aquiline  nose,  a  little 
gray  mustache  that  failed  to  hide  a  rosebud  mouth,  and  a 
placid  double  chin.  There  was  something  about  the  man  that 
the  boy,  generally  so  ready  to  like  everybody,  at  first  disliked. 

64 


VICTORIOUS  65 

This  body  wore  its  clothes  not  easily,  but  blatantly;  it  was 
too  comfortable,  too  sleek,  and  it  seemed  only  a  body.  The 
question  flashed  through  Andy:  Would  he  ever  grow  to 
be  like  that?  Would  he  some  day  become  round  and  placid 
and  material?  Was  life,  as  this  personality  proclaimed  it, 
nothing  but  a  satisfied  progress  away  from  the  star  of  youth  ? 

"Thank  God,  an  American!"  ejaculated  the  comfortable 
traveler.  Most  high  voices  are  thin;  this  one  was  corpulent. 
Its  relief,  moreover,  was  so  sincere  that  Andy  softened. 

He  acknowledged  his  nationality  and  repeated  his  question. 

"Yes,  take  the  seat,"  said  the  little  man.  "But  you'll  have 
to  get  that  suit-case  out  of  the  way  for  yourself :  you  see,  I'm 
settled." 

Andy's  strong  arms  made  short  work  of  an  excessively 
heavy  piece  of  luggage.  He  settled  down  in  its  place. 

"Where  you  from?"  asked  his  compatriot. 

Andy  told  him.  There  had  been  so  many  to  smile  when  he 
mentioned  his  small  town  that  he  now  mentioned  it  defiantly. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  the  little  man.  He  received  the  name  of 
Americus  quite  as  if  it  were  Baltimore  or  San  Francisco,  and 
Andy  was  still  more  mollified  thereby.  "That's  in  Doncaster 
County,  isn't  it?  I  handled  a  water-company  contract  in 
Doncaster  about  ten  years  ago." 

Andy  wanted  to  talk  about  Doncaster  County — next  to' 
speculating  as  to  whether  he  had  been  a  victim  of  hallucina 
tion  in  the  Metro,  that  was  the  most  interesting  subject  he 
could  think  of — but  the  little  man  preferred  a  topic  more 
immediate.  In  his  discussion  of  it  there  developed  the  fact 
that  he  was  one  of  those  whose  comfort  is  derived  in  large 
measure  from  contrast  with  the  things  about  them. 

"The  quickest  way  to  get  rich,"  said  the  little  man,  "is  to- 
get  on  a  French  train :  you'll  soon  find  you'll  be  better  off." 
He  chuckled ;  he  moved  his  legs  contentedly  under  the  plaid 
rug.  "Isn't  this  country  a  bluff,  though  ?" 

"Why,  no,"  said  Andy.  "You  see—"  He  looked  uneasily 
at  their  neighbors. 

"Oh,  they  can't  speak  English,"  the  little  man  assured  him : 
"I  tried  them  all  first  thing  they  came  in.  I  think  this  coun- 


66  YICTOEIOUS 

try's  a  bluff.  It's  a  nation  of  advertising-agents;  they're  all 
so  busy  writing  prospectuses  that  nobody's  had  time  to  wring 
the  water  out  of  the  stock.  'Gay  Paree' — we've  all  heard 
about  that:  well,  it's  about  as  gay  as  your  mother's  funeral. 
The  chic  French  girls':  I  haven't  seen  a  really  fashionably 
dressed  girl  since  I  left  Chicago.  These  people  can't  help  it : 
they  just  can't  tell  the  truth.  Take  the  ones  that  say  they 
can  speak  English.  Can  they?  They  can  not.  Every  time 
they  go  to  bat,  their  English  dies  at  second.  Don't  you  ever 
believe  these  Erench  head-waiters  that  say  they  understand 
you.  I  went  into  the  Ritz  restaurant  last  night  and  asked  for 
sweet-potatoes,  and  what  do  you  think  they  brought  me  ?  Sug 
ared  murphies !  They  say  they've  studied  geography,  and  if 
you  tell  'em  you  were  born  in  Seattle,  but  went  to  college  in 
New  Haven,  they'll  ask  you  if  you  slept  home  nights.  Have  a 
cigar?" 

He  uttered  the  question  as  if  it  were  a  piece  with  the  speech 
that  preceded  it.  He  offered  Andy  a  silver-mounted  morocco- 
case  filled  with  cigars  wrapped  in  tin-foil. 

The  train  was  passing  whitewashed  villages:  here  a  shop 
and  there  a  cottage,  the  high  walls  that  shut  off  the  sight  of 
a  villa,  and  beyond  that  the  balconied  dwelling  of  a  physician 
or  avocat  whose  name  and  profession  were  announced  by  an 
oval  brass-plate  on  the  front  door.  Andy,  looking  across  his 
neighbor,  saw  not  so  much  these,  nor  yet  the  small,  symmetri 
cal  fields :  he  was  thinking  of  the  Metro  station  and  what  he 
had  seen  there,  or  seemed  to  see. 

The  little  man  kept  on  talking.  It  was  to  be  gathered  that 
lie  made  many  patriotic  speeches  in  America,  that  he  had  been 
,"over"  for  some  time,  that  his  home  was  in  Chicago,  that  he 
,was  a  contractor  and  a  childless  widower. 

"There's  nothing  as  helpless  on  earth  as  the  widower  that 
has  spent  all  his  married  life  wondering  how  his  wife'd  man 
age  to  get  along  without  him  if  he  died  first,"  said  the  little 
man.  "My  wife  (bless  her  soul!)  used  to  say  she  wondered 
what  kind  of  a  woman  I'd  marry  if  she  died,  and  I  used  to 
'say,  'Some  other  kind,  I  guess.'  But  she  wasn't  any  sooner 
'gone  than  I  knew  I  couldn't  half  get  on  without  her  and 


VICTORIOUS  67 

couldn't  get  on  at  all  with  any  other  woman.  I  like  the  ladies ; 
I  like  to  be  polite  to  'em — I  hate  to  see  a  lady  stand  in  a  car : 
that's  why  I  always  carry  a  newspaper — but  I'd  as  soon  think 
of  living  in  Europe  for  choice  as  marrying  for  it." 

Something  about  the  man  stirred  Andy's  memory. 

"Did  you  say  you  were  from  Chicago  ?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,  sir/'  said  the  little  fellow :  "and  proud  of  it.  I'm  a 
Chicagoan  born  and  raised.  It  is  in  Chicago  that  there  are 
all  'the  loved  spots  that  my  infancy  knew.'  D'you  remember 
the  story  about  the  school-teacher?  She  asked  her  primary 
class  to  make  pictures  about  'The  Old  Oaken  Bucket' — illus 
trate  it,  you  know — and  one  little  girl  made  a  circle,  three 
buckets  and  a  line  of  dots.  The  kid  said  the  circle  was  the 
well;  one  bucket  was  the  'oaken  bucket/  one  was  the  'iron- 
bound  bucket'  and  the  last  was  the  'bucket  that  hung  in  the 
well' ;  the  dots  were  'the  loved  spots  that  my  infancy  knew.' '' 

"Are  you  a  lawyer  ?"  asked  Andy. 

The  little  man  pulled  his  gray  mustache.  "One  time,"  he 
answered,  "I  saw  a  drunk  looking  at  an  old  tombstone  in  the 
graveyard  out  in  Medora — that's  down  in  Macoupin  County. 
The  name  was  worn  away ;  all  you  could  read  on  the  stone  was 
the  words,  'A  Lawyer  and  an  Honest  Man.'  I  asked  the  drunk 
what  troubled  him.  He  points  to  these  words  and  he  says: 
'I  was  wonderin'  how  they  come  to  bury  those  two  fellows  in 
one  grave.'  No,  my  son,  I'm  not  a  lawyer,  but  I  belong  to  the 
same  lodge :  I'm  a  contractor.  Just  now  I'm  a  contractor  in 
aeroplanes." 

"Your  name's  McGregor,"  said  Andy. 

"You  ring  the  bell  at  the  first  guess :  B.  Frank  McGregor." 

"I  have  a  letter  to  you,"  said  Andy — "in  Paris.  It's  from 
Andrew  Blunston." 

"Met  him  in  Manila  in  1901,"  said  Mr.  McGregor.  "I  was 
the  only  white  man  that  knew  Aguinaldo  was  at  Panalan — 
I'd  had  a  little  deal  with  him  once — and  I  tipped  off  Blun 
ston.  Met  him  again  on  the  Yalu  when  I  took  over  a  cargo 
of  rifles.  Saw  him  in  New  York  just  before  I  left.  He's  the 
best  newspaper-man  in  the  world,  but  he's  so  honest  that  the 
world  won't  ever  find  that  out." 


68  VICTORIOUS 

Mr.  McGregor  had  Andy  haul  down  the  big  suit-case  to 
look  for  a  snapshot  of  himself  and  Blunston,  which  the  boy 
found  under  carefully  folded  and  heavily  scented  piles  of  silk 
.underwear,  silk  pajamas  and  a  flowered  silk  dressing-gown, 
among  which  were  wrapped  bottles  of  hair-wash  and  face- 
I paste,  boxes  of  pomade,  a  mustache-brush  and  a  manicure-set 
j  complete  to  the  point  of  nail-polish.  The  picture  strengthened 
I  the  change  in  Andy's  feelings:  he  did  not  approve  of  Mr. 
[McGregor,  but  he  admitted  that  he  did  not  altogether  un 
derstand  him. 

On  his  part,  Mr.  McGregor  took  a  liking  to  Andy  immedi 
ately.  "Any  friend  of  Blunston's  a  friend  of  mine/'  He 
seemed  to  have  some  mysterious,  but  extensive,  powers  in  con 
nection  with  the  A.  E.  F.,  and,  giving  Andy  his  card  with 
"Hotel  Kitz"  engraved  on  it,  he  commanded  him  to  call  "when 
ever  I  can  do  anything  for  you — anything  in  the  world." 

II 

One  of  the  persons  that  McGregor  knew  was  Lieutenant 
Garcia.  This  censor,  though  Andy  was  unaware  of  it,  was 
aboard  the  Express,  and  it  was  so  important  for  McGregor  to 
see  him  that  he  presently  moaned  his  way  out  of  his  cerements 
and  sought  Garcia  in  the  corridor  of  another  carriage.  He  lit 
a  cigar  without  offering  one  to  the  lieutenant. 

"Any  trouble  so  far  ?"  he  demanded. 

"Nobody's  written  a  word  about  aeroplanes  yet,"  Garcia  re 
plied. 

They  leaned  against  the  metal  rail  before  the  window. 
Their  tones  were  low,  but  not  muffled.  Anybody  observing 
them  would  have  supposed  them  discussing  the  landscape. 

"Sure  of  it  ?" — this  from  McGregor,  who  pulled  at  his  gray 
mustache. 

"I've  given  orders  that  any  aeroplane  story's  to  be  submitted 
to  me."  Garcia's  Latin  face  was  sullen.  "I'm  no  fool,"  he 
said. 

"No  ?"  countered  McGregor.    "You're  well  disguised  then." 


VICTOKIOUS  69 

The  lieutenant  flashed  him  an  evil  glance.  "Don't  try  that 
sort  of  thing  on  me." 

McGregor's  responding  laugh  was  sincerely  pleasant.  "My 
dear  young  man,  I'll  try  anything  on  you  that  I  think'll  fit, 
and  if  you  don't  like  it,  I'll  produce  that  little  receipt  you 
signed  for  the  first  money  I  paid  you.  Meantime,  let's  be 
agreeable.  I  want  only  my  money's  worth.  If  you  double-cross 
anybody  else  that's  bought  you,  that's  their  lookout :  all  /  want 
kept  out  of  the  papers  is  aeroplanes,  and  I'm  not  hurting  any 
body  by  having  it  done." 

He  seemed  to  feel  a  need  of  justification  to  himself,  for,  al 
though  it  was  patent  that  he  cared  nothing  for  Garcia's  opin 
ion  of  him,  he  continued : 

"The  people  back  home  have  to  be  educated  up  to  these 
things;  they  can't  bear  all  the  truth  all  at  once.  They  think 
they  can  clean  up  a  war  by  Saturday  night  and  be  home  in 
their  slippers  reading  about  the  Katzen jammer  Kids  Sunday 
morning,  while  Caruso's  singing  to  'em  out  of  the  victrola. 
Well,  they  can't.  We're  all  human;  we've  got  to  make  mis 
takes  at  first  and  learn  by  our  mistakes,  but  the  people  won't 
realize  that,  and  so  we've  just  got  to  keep  the  mistakes  quiet 
till  everything's  fine  again.  Now,  then,  let's  get  down  to  busi 
ness." 

They  got  down  to  it  and  remained  down  for  some  time. 
They  had  reached  their  station,  and  McGregor's  servant  came 
from  his  second-class  carriage  to  carry  out  the  big  suit-case, 
before  they  were  ready  to  arise. 

in 

That  there  was  indeed  to  be  a  grand  review  Andy  learned 
as  soon  as  he  descended  from  the  train  at  the  outskirts  of  the 
American  camp. 

He  carried  his  gossip  to  the  headquarters  of  the  press-divi 
sion  and  there  received  a  grudging  confirmation.  Then  he 
went  to  Leonie's  inn  and  dreamed  of  Metro  trains  and  faces 
at  their  windows,  until  dawn. 


70  VICTORIOUS 

The  sun  came  up  in  a  golden  haze. 

The  heavy  mists  of  the  night  were  breaking  and  retreating 
in  a  disorderly  rout  of  flying  fleeces  through  the  hollows  of 
the  lower  hills  when  Andy  climbed  to  the  tableland  chosen 
for  the  maneuver. 

It  was  a  countryside  teeming  with  historic  memories,  but 
one  that,  in  all  its  centuries  of  war  and  rumors  of  war,  had 
not  once,  Andy  felt  as  he  looked  out  at  it,  seen  a  race  prepar 
ing  for  battle  with  so  high  a  purpose  as  that  which  peopled  it 
now. 

There  was  a  far-off  sound  of  trumpets.  It  drew  nearer,  and 
following  it,  the  rhythmic  noise  of  marching  feet.  Looking 
from  the  highest  point  of  the  plateau,  it  was  possible  to  see  a 
spot  at  which  several  roads  converged,  and  along  these  roads 
was  something  moving :  long  lines  of  men  in  khaki  were  mov 
ing,  men  under  the  peaked  American  service-hats,  and  over 
them,  fluttering  in  the  kindly  air  of  France,  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  of  America. 

Again  the  flourish  of  trumpets.  The  plateau  had  been 
ascended ;  the  entire  first  division,  arrived  from  every  point  of 
the  compass,  had  fallen  into  one  great  formation,  like  the  mul 
titudinous  pieces  of  a  gigantic  jig-saw  puzzle  miraculously 
and  instantaneously  solved. 

There  they  were,  their  bands  blazing  into  an  American 
march,  their  wide  American  bayonets  gleaming,  their  keen 
American  faces  alight. 

Here  was  the  confluence  of  mighty  waters ;  the  young  river, 
after  a  far  and  ever  quickening  journey,  was  rushing  into  the 
bed,  at  last,  of  the  older  and  more  deliberate  stream ;  long  as 
some  of  our  men  had  been  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  this 
was  the  arrival  of  America  in  France.  That  was  the  meaning 
to  every  man  present ;  not  forgetting  the  gymnastics  of  months 
past,  the  army  then  in  the  making  at  home,  and  the  training 
still  here  to  be  completed,  one  had  on  this  spot  visibly  demon 
strated  the  beginning  of  America's  part  in  the  World  War. 

Far  up  the  plateau  a  little  group  of  officers — some  in  olive 
drab  and  some  in  blue — had  appeared.  They  walked  rapidly 
toward  the  advancing  columns  and  came  to  a  pause  on  the 


VICTORIOUS  71 

edge  of  the  improvised  parade-ground,  half-way  down  the 
length  of  the  tableland. 

For  the  first  time  Andy  now  noticed  that  two  of  the  cor 
respondents  stationed  at  the  camp  had  come  to  that  point 
of  vantage  which  he  had  gained.  To  them  he  turned.  His 
eyes  were  dancing  with  excitement;  he  pointed  to  one  of  the 
reviewing-officers. 

"Who's  the  big  fat  fellow  in  red  and  blue?"  he  asked. 

He  was  not  answered,  because  just  then  another  order 
passed  along  the  lines.  They  had  been  going  forward  in  col 
umn  of  squads;  now  the  formation  was  "Company  front." 
Into  this  they  swung.  It  is  the  hardest  thing  to  do  in  all  the 
infantry  drill-regulations — that  formation  of  marching  men 
from  groups  of  fours  into  two  long,  perfectly  straight  and 
perfectly  uniform,  lines  to  the  company  —  but  they  did  it. 
They  did  it  without  a  break  and,  so  formed,  advanced  down 
the  field,  exactly  one  hundred  and  twenty  paces  to  the  minute, 
toward  the  little  group  of  officers.  The  lines  stiffened.  Col 
umn  after  column  they  came,  turning  into  company-front  at 
the  parade-ground's  edge,  until  the  whole  plateau  swarmed 
with  the  whole  division. 

"Eyes— right!" 

They  went  by  the  reviewing-officers — by  the  men  in  khaki 
and  the  fat  man  in  red  and  blue,  their  forearms  at  an  angle 
of  forty-five  degrees,  the  heads  of  the  rankers  snapped  side- 
wise. 

"Front  r 

The  captains'  hands  came  down,  the  rankers'  heads  faced 
forward  again  as  the  reviewing-officers  were  passed. 

At  the  far  end  of  the  plateau,  the  regiments  were  drawn  up 
into  battalions,  and  were  rapidly  inspected;  and  then,  sud 
denly,  that  fat  man  in  red  and  blue  was  speaking  to  them,  and 
everybody  realized  that  he  was  Marshal  Joffre. 

Andy  nearly  killed  himself  in  his  run  across  the  field  to 
hear  that  speech,  but  it  was  a  military  speech  and  therefore 
brief.  It  was  ended  before  he  arrived. 

The  entire  review  was  a  matter  of  a  relatively  few  minutes. 
The  great  jig-saw  puzzle  was  resolved  into  its  components  as 


72  VICTORIOUS 

swiftly  and  as  methodically  as  it  had  recently  been  assembled ; 
the  wide  tableland,  the  hills  and  the  valleys  were  apparently 
empty  again. 

Andy,  who  was  to  take  the  evening  train  back  to  Paris,  had 
several  hours  before  him.  He  was  just  turning  in  at  the  inn- 
door  when  he  saw  one  soldier  point  him  out  to  another. 

"That's  him,"  Andy  heard  the  first  one  say. 

The  other  strode  across  to  him.  The  oncoming  young  fel 
low  was  in  the  thin  uniform  of  all  the  men  about  him.  His 
service-hat  sat  well  over  eyes  of  which  Andy  could  catch  only 
a  sparkle  and  above  hair  of  the  military  cut.  To  say  that  his 
cheeks  were  bronzed  and  his  shoulders  square  would  be  to  say 
but  what  was  descriptive  of  every  soldier  within  sight,  yet 
there  was  something  in  his  gait,  not  yet  eradicated  by  army- 
training,  which  reminded  Andy  of  home. 

"You're  Brown,  ain't?"  asked  the  approaching  figure. 

Modified  as  the  cadence  was  by  contact  with  speech  from 
other  portions  of  his  country,  this  was  still  the  cadence,  and 
its  form  was  still  the  form,  of  the  Pennsylvania-Dutch.  Andy 
thrust  out  a  ready  hand. 

"That's  my  name." 

"I  heard  you  was  here.    You're  from  Americus,  ain't  ?" 

"You  bet  you,"  said  Andy. 

The  large  frame  of  the  soldier  straightened.  Andy  could 
see  that  his  eyes  were  brown  and  that  his  grin  was  undiluted 
gladness. 

"So'm  I.  Least  I'm  Doncaster  County,  an'  I  'tend  market 
still" — the  speaker's  voice  softened — he  added:  "when  I'm 
home.  My  name's  Shuman." 

Andy  wrung  his  hand. 

"Chrissly  Shuman?  I've  heard  about  you.  Gee,  this  is 
good!  When  did  you  come  over?  The  — th  Infantry? 
Where  you  billeted  ?  Come  in  and  tell  me  all  about  yourself, 
and  all  about  the  old  town !" 

They  tramped  from  one  end  of  that  French  village  to  the 
other  and  back  again,  going  over  topics  familiar  to  them  both, 
jecalling  scenes  that  were  to  both  intimate,  repeating,  for  the 
mere  joy  of  their  sound,  names  that  they  both  knew.  "Do  you 


VICTORIOUS  73 

remember  the  Blunston  house?" — "You  know  good  old  Col 
onel  Eskessen — they  say  he  always  samples  everything  in  mar 
ket  before  he  buys  any." — "Wouldn't  you  like  to  be  walking 
down  Elm  Avenue  now?" 

"When  did  you  get  a  letter  ?"  asked  Andy. 

"I  ain't  got  my  letters  a'ready,"  said  Chrissly.  "None  of 
us  fellows  gets  letters  much.  There's  somesing  wrong  about 
the  army  mails." 

"I've  got  one,"  said  Andy.  He  pulled  out  his  last  letter 
from  his  mother;  the  mere  sight  of  the  postmark  was  com 
forting  to  Chrissly,  and  to  this  Andy  added  by  reading  ex 
tracts  that  mentioned  streets  or  names  that  the  former  farm- 
boy  had  seen  or  heard.  "Why,  I've  got  a  copy  of  the  Spy 
somewhere,"  said  Andy.  He  fished  it  out  of  an  overcoat 
pocket.  "Colonel  Eskessen  sends  it  to  me  regularly,  and  some 
times  I  get  it." 

"We  take  the  Doncaster  New  Era  at  our  house,"  murmured 
Chrissly.  His  hands  shook  as  he  received  the  paper.  "Can 
I  read  it?" 

"You  can  keep  it,"  said  Andy. 

"Oh,  Brown— you  won't  mind,  still?" 

"Sure  not.  I'm  done  with  it.  I  tell  you  what  I'll  do :  I'll 
send  you  my  copies  as  fast  as  I  read  them." 

Big  Chrissly  choked  in  his  gratitude.    After  a  bit  he  asked : 

"You're  one  o'  these  here  co-respondents,  ain't  ?" 

Andy  nodded. 

<rWell,  all  us  fellows  we  says  as  you  fellows  you  just  look  on 
an'  don't  have  to  work  an'  won't  have  to  fight  none,  but  we  all 
wants  to  get  our  names  in  the  papers  back  home  just  the 
samey.  I  guess  you  do  a  pretty  good  work." 

Chrissly  himself  was  here,  it  seemed,  by  one  of  the  chances 
common  enough  in  those  days.  The  Amish  are  conscientious 
objectors,  and  later  most  of  those  drafted  were  set  to  the  more 
peaceful  labor  of  the  army;  but,  although  his  parents  were 
members  of  the  Amish  faith,  this  boy  had  not  formally  joined 
the  communion  when  his  number  was  drawn,  and  a  too-scru 
pulous  local  draft-board  had  abided  strictly  by  the  blue  let 
ter  of  the  existing  law.  Chrissly  had  been  sent  abroad  after 


74  VICTORIOUS 

comparatively  little  home  training  and  was  thrown,  by  one  of 
the  many  chances  of  this  great  war,  into  a  regular  army  regi 
ment  filled  up  by  volunteers  as  the  old  regulars  were  gradually 
removed. 

"Oh,  yes/'  said  Andy,  "I  remember  now.  You  were  Amish. 
Minnie  Taylor  used  to  tell  me  about  you." 

There  was  an  alteration  in  Chrissly  at  the  mention  of  that 
name.  An  unmistakable  uneasiness  colored  his  face. 

"This  here  France  makes  changes  in  a  fellow,  Brown/'  he 
said.  "It  makes  lots  6'  sings  seem  kind  o'  different  to  what 
they  used  to  was." 

Andy  turned  the  subject.  "They  used  to  say  you  were  a 
regular  pro-German  in  Americus,"  he  said.  "They"  stood  for 
Minnie  Taylor,  but  Andy  felt  it  best  to  employ  a  deceptive 
pronoun. 

"Well,  I  was— kind  of,"  Chrissly  admitted,  "till  I  got  talk- 
in'  against  rules  to  some  o'  these  here  German  prisoners  on 
the  quiet  still.  I  sought  the  Germans  was  the  same  people  as 
us  Pennsylvania-Dutch,  Brown." 

"I  see,"  said  Andy. 

"Well,  they  ain't." 

"No  ?"    Andy  wanted  to  hear  more  of  this. 

"No,"  said  Chrissly.  "Why,  when  I  told  'em  my  name,  they 
says  I'd  ought  fer  to  spell  it  'S-c-h/  an'  fer  to  put  anozzer 
'n'  on  the  back  end  of  it  still !  Some  French  talk  I'm  learnin' 
a'ready,  but  a  Pennsylvania-Dutch  man,  he  can't  effer  half 
unerstan'  wliat  these  here  German  men  says,  not  the  common 
est  words,  even.  Look  at  'horseshoe' :  that's  'hoofeisa,'  but 
these  here  fellows  they  calls  it  'hufeisen/  Us  Dutch,  we  says 
'watch'  just  like  anybody  does,  but  these  German  fellows  says 
somesing  sounds  like  'taschen-lmhr'  an'  then  they  goes  an' 
calls  a  wagon  the  same  as  you  when  we  say  'woga.'  Why,  a 
boot's  a  fslidiivfr  wis  us  an'  a  'stiefel'  wis  ?em.  When  they 
come  callin'  a  ball-game — a  'bolashbcla,'  you  know,  Brown — 
when  they  come  callin'  that  a  'battspiel/  I  gif  up.  No,"  he 
wagged  his  head,  "they  ain't  the  same  as  us,  an'  I  begin  to 
believe  all  they  says  about  'em's  true  still." 

Andy  thought  there  might  be  something  in  his  new  friend's 


VICTORIOUS  75 

logic.  He  branched  into  his  own  difficulties  with  French  as 
indicative  that  a  complete  difference  in  language  is  less  of  a 
bar  to  mutual  appreciation  than  a  merely  seeming  similarity, 
and  he  was  illustrating  this  point  by  reference  to  the  troubles 
he  had  encountered  during  his  first  journey  to  the  American 
camp  when  he  mentioned  the  village  of  Mirande-la-Faloise 
to  which  his  bad  French  led  him  on  that  occasion. 

"Mirande-la-Faloise ?"  Chrissly  interrupted;  he  spoke  the 
name  glibly.  "Was  you  there  still  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  Andy.    "You  know  it,  do  you?" 

"Did  you  see  a  big  house  there,  like  a  hotel  yet,  wis  lilies 
f  er  a  sign  ?" 

Andy  remembered  the  substantial  building  very  well. 

"Why,"  said  Chrissly,  "that's  her  pap's !  There  she  lived 
all  her  life  till  these  here  Germans  they  drove  everybody  out 
o'  house  an'  home !" 

"Whose  father's?    Who  lived  there?" 

"The  girl  what's  waitin'  on  table  at  the  hotel  in  this  wil- 
lage."  Chrissly  stopped  short.  His  face  became  crimson.  "Her 
name's  Leonie,"  he  finally  added. 

Then  Andy  remembered  the  waitress  that  had  attended  him 
when  he  dined  here  with  Evans,  the  dark  full-bosomed  girl 
that  had  carried  herself  like  a  panther  and  walked  as  only 
peasants  walk  and  queens. 

IV 

Chrissly  Shuman,  too,  had  found  romance  in  the  land  of 
Jeanne  d'Arc.  Until  his  regiment  was  moved  to  that  village 
in  which  he  subsequently  met  Andy,  he  had  been  as  homesick 
as  any  of  his  fellow  soldiers ;  like  them,  he  made  his  first  ques 
tion  of  every  newcomer,  "When  do  you  think  the  war  will  be 
over  ?" ;  he  frankly  wanted  to  get  back  to  the  farm-tasks  that 
had  once  seemed  dull  and  onerous,  and  he  wanted  to  see  Min 
nie  Taylor.  Now  he  was  homesick,  but  it  was  homesickness 
with  a  difference,  it  was  mollified  nostalgia,  and  distinctly  the 
thought  of  Minnie  was  not  among  its  symptoms.  This  had 
begun  with  his  first  sight  of  Leonie. 


76  VICTORIOUS 

Early  in  the  dusk  of  a  summer  evening,  the  big  fellow  had 
happened  to  be  cradling  his  disease  by  a  stroll  that  led  him 
past  the  inn.  Under  a  lamp  at  its  courtyard-door  the  hand 
some  Leonie,  returning  from  some  errand,  was  in  talk  with  an 
American  soldier  obviously  the  worse  for  his  visit  to  the  tap 
room.  The  soldier  had  stopped  her  and  was  detaining  her. 
He  said  something  that  Chrissly  could  not  hear. 

Chrissly  saw  that  Leonie's  only  reply  was  a  ripple  of  the 
shoulders,  which  was  her  pantherine  equivalent  of  a  shrug. 
Chrissly  drew  nearer. 

Again  the  soldier  spoke. 

"Vdrt-en!"  said  Leonie. 

Chrissly  paused  uncertainly. 

The  man  that  was  confronting  Leonie  bent  forward.  She 
picked  him  up  bodily  and  set  him  to  one  side.  She  started  to 
move  on,  but  the  man  caught  her  arm  and  kissed  her. 

Her  free  hand  flew  to  her  face  to  rub  away  the  traces  of  the 
insult.  She  blazed  at  him. 

"Cochon!"  she  stormed.  She  broke  free  and  raised  an  open 
hand  for  a  blow. 

Before  the  blow  could  descend,  Chrissly,  the  non-resister, 
had  leaped  forward.  He  forestalled  the  girl's  blow  by  one  of 
his  own  that  landed  nicely  upon  the  point  of  the  offending  sol 
dier's  chin  and  curled  him  up  in  unconsciousness  half-way 
across  the  muddy  street. 

"Sank  you." 

Le"onie  had  employed  one  of  the  few  English  phrases  that 
her  service  here  had  taught  her.  She  stood  there  with  her 
eyes  ablaze,  her  broad  bosom  heaving,  her  hands  clenched 
at  her  sides,  a  wild  thing  without  fear.  Then  she  turned  on 
Chrissly  a  gaze  friendly  and  admiring. 

"C'etait  un  Ion  coup,  $a"  she  said.  "C'a  ete  superbe." 

That  was  the  beginning  of  Chrissly's  acquaintance  with 
Leonie.  It  was  the  beginning  of  his  French  lessons,  too,  and 
of  his  education  in  many  other  ways.  It  included  visits  to 
the  inn-kitchen,  where  Leonie  brought  him  whole  suppers, 
and  when,  as  he  tried  to  eat  potatoes  with  a  knife,  she  in 
sistently  thrust  a  fork  into  his  hands,  replying  to  his  "Us 


VICTORIOUS  77 

Amish  don't  hold  by  forks  for  such"  with  a  laughing  Gallic 
volley  that  told  him,  plainly  enough,  that  forks  were  the 
proper  implement  and  must  be  employed.  It  included  at 
tempts  at  conversation  in  unobserved  corners  and  silent  walks 
about  the  village  well  before  taps ;  but  it  did  not  include  open 
love-making,  because  Chrissly  had  a  conscience  about  Minnie 
Taylor,  and  because  Leonie  had  a  laughter  that  kept  senti 
ment  on  guard.  Chrissly  thought  he  had  never  seen  anything 
like  her,  and  he  was  right. 

Not  all  of  this  did  he  tell  Andy,  but  he  told,  in  his  awk 
ward  way,  enough,  and  much  of  the  rest  Andy  was  able  to 
surmise. 

"So,"  said  Chrissly,  "I  guess  that  helped  like  to  get  me 
over  bein'  pro-German,  an'  when  she  tol'  me  how  she  was 
chased  out  o'  her  home  still,  an'  what  worse  sings  them  Ger 
man  men  did  in  willages  they  wrecked  wisout  drivin'  the  folks 
out  yet,  why,  I  changed  my  mind  effery  ways.  I  tell  you  what 
I'm  sinkin'  about  now  when  I'm  sinkin'  about  fightin' :  I'm 
sinkin'  about  how  they  done  to  her  folks  in  Mirande-la-Fa- 
loise,  and  how  it'd  be  if  them  fellows  effer  got  to  Ameriky 
an'  our  farm  an'  the  rose  bushes  along  the  walk  up  to  the 
front-porch." 


Andy  was  proud  of  his  story.  He  had  tried  to  write  some 
thing  on  which  Blunston,  who  was  sending  him  complimen 
tary  letters,  would  have  to  do  less  work  than  on  any  manu 
script  that  Andy  had  yet  submitted  to  him.  The  boy  felt  what 
he  had  seen  on  the  tableland  at  the  American  camp,  and  he 
tried  to  convey  his  impressions  to  his  reader. 

Garcia  tossed  the  manuscript  into  a  wire-basket. 

"If  it's  possible,"  said  Andy,  "I'd  like  that  to  be  censored 
to-day.  You  see,  the  other  fellows  are  cabling." 

"It  isn't  possible,"  said  Garcia.  "Here,"  he  continued, 
"turn  this  pass  into  the  provost-marshal's  yourself,  will  you  ?" 

His  clerk  had  told  him  of  how  Andy  had  recovered  the 
pass.  Garcia  was  angry  at  what  seemed  to  him  a  trick. 


,78  VICTOKIOUS 

The  doorway  to  the  provost-marshal's  office  formed  a  frame 
for  the  picture  of  those  persons  within  it  who  stood  along 
the  rail  for  registrants,  military  and  civil,  and  civilian  ap 
plicants  for  passes.  In  the  center  of  the  group,  Andy  saw 
the  erect,  pointed  ears  of  a  police-dog,  its  bushy  tail  droop 
ing,  its  head  close  beside  the  ankles  of  a  girl.  The  girl  was 
at  pause  before  one  of  the  clerks;  she  was  dressed  in  a  suit 
of  dark  blue,  or  black,  and  something  about  her  young  pose, 
her  unstudied  poise,  set  Andy's  heart  to  pounding. 

He  traversed  the  rest  of  the  corridor  in  three  rapid  strides. 

She  was  puzzled  as  to  her  procedure.  She  half  turned,  and 
the  light  from  a  window  fell  on  her  pure  profile  and  showed 
her  slightly  puckered  brows. 

She  was  the  girl  of  the  Metro:  she  was  Sylvia  Eaeburn. 

Andy,  to  his  utter  amazement,  found  himself  abreast  of 
her.  He  was  facing  her.  Good  heavens,  what  was  this  he  was 
doing?  Was  he  speaking  to  her? 

He  was :  he  stood  there,  hat  in  hand,  talking.  Never  before 
in  his  life  had  he  spoken  to  a  girl  he  did  not  know.  Even 
now  he  scarcely  knew  what  he  was  saying.  Hard  as  it  was 
for  him  to  realize  the  girl,  it  was  a  score  of  times  more  diffi 
cult  for  him  to  realize  himself. 

"Can  I  help  you?"  he  heard  his  own  voice  saying.  It  was 
his  own  voice,  he  was  almost  sure  of  that,  and  yet  it  was  so 
charged  with  excitement  that  he  would  not  have  sworn  to  it. 

Two  or  three  officers  that  had  been  covertly  looking  at  the 
girl  shifted  envious  glances  to  Andy. 

For  the  fraction  of  a  second  the  girl  hesitated. 

Andy  saw  a  precipice  of  rebuff  and  mortification  yawn 
ing  beneath  his  feet.  He  sought  desperately  to  save  himself. 

"You  see,  I  know — I  know  the  ropes  here,"  he  stammered. 
"I'm  a  correspondent.  My  name's  Brown:  Andy — Andrew 
Brown." 

Oh,  Paris  was  a  city  of  miracles!  Andy  really  expected 
to  be  repulsed;  his  eyes  and  ears  were  slow  to  credit  what 
followed,  and  yet  it  did  happen. 

She  was  putting  out  a  frank  hand  to  him;  it  was  white, 
but  almost  boyish :  the  fingers  of  Aphrodite  and  the  thumb  of 


VICTOBIOUS  79 

Hermes.  She  was  laughing  pleasantly,  a  low  modulated  laugh. 
She  was  saying : 

"Yes,  I  knew  you  were  somewhere  here.  I  should  be  aw 
fully  grateful  if  you  would  help  me  fill  out  the  blank  form 
that  these  people  have  given  me." 

Andy  felt  his  cheeks  turn  scarlet  as  his  fingers  closed 
about  the  cool  firm  hand.  It  was  all  white  magic — the  hand, 
the  whole  episode. 

"H-how — how  did  you  know  me?"  he  gasped. 

"I  didn't  until  you  told  me.  Some  time  before  I  left  home, 
I  met  Mr.  Blunston  in  New  York.  I've  known  him  for  ages. 
He  said  he'd  come  there  to  see  you  off." 

Well,  it  was  wonderful  anyhow !  Andy  did  not  know  what 
to  say  next,  but  he  was  saved  the  effort  of  making  talk  by 
her  statement : 

"It  seemed  rather  as  if  you  knew  me." 

"I  did,"  he  said.  "I  saw  you — we  saw  you — Mr.  Blunston 
and  I — at  the  theater — that  was  in  New  York,  too — the — it 
was  right  before  I  sailed.  He  didn't  tell  me  he  knew  you, 
but  of  course  I  remembered  you."  His  laugh  was  always  in 
fectious  ;  she  echoed  it.  She  could  laugh,  he  noted,  while  her 
blue-gray  eyes  retained  all  the  wistfulness  that  he  had  ex 
pected  to  see  in  them.  "How  long  have  you  been  here?"  he 
asked. 

"Four  days." 

"Then  I  saw  you  almost  as  soon  as  you  got  here !" 

That  also  was  wonderful  to  him.  He  made  it  wonderful 
to  her: 

"Where— and  when?" 

"Day  before  yesterday.  In  the  Metro — the  subway,  you 
know.  I  was  going  down  to  camp.  I  knew  you  right  away !" 

He  became  conscious,  though  because  of  no  apparent  aid 
from  her,  that  he  was  holding  her  hand.  He  dropped  it  re 
luctantly,  but  hurriedly. 

"Come  over  to  this  desk,"  he  said,  "and  we'll  fill  out  that 
form." 

She  called  the  dog  to  follow. 

"Isn't  he  a  beauty?   He  was  the  mascot  of  a  company  of 


80  VICTORIOUS 

marines  that  crossed  on  our  boat ;  he's  a  pure-blooded  French 
police-dog — they  were  ' German'  police-dogs  before  the  war 
— but  these  men  got  him  in  Hayti.  We  had  some  theatricals 
for  them,  and  they  insisted  on  presenting  him  to  me." 

They  stood  by  the  desk,  not  attending  to  the  form  that  the 
clerk  had  given  her  and  wholly  oblivious  of  the  interested 
faces  around  them.  Her  boyish  hand  stroked  the  dog's  fur, 
and  the  dog  gratefully  wagged  his  tail  without  raising  it. 

"When  I  asked  them  his  breed,"  she  said,  "they  told  me 
he  hadn't  any;  they  called  him  'just  dog.'  But  I  find  he 
really  has  first-rate  points,  and  he  has  been  'dresse ' :  if  you 
gave  him  your  handkerchief  to  smell  and  then  hid  it  in  the 
pocket  of  any  man  in  this  room — without  his  seeing  you — 
and  then  if  you  told  him  to  look  for  it,  he  would  find  it  in 
two  or  three  minutes." 

The  dog  was  beautiful :  anything  that  was  hers  would  have 
to  be.  Andy  inquired  his  name. 

"There  seems  to  be  some  doubt  about  that,"  Miss  Raeburn 
told  him.  "When  I  asked  the  marines,  they  said  something 
that  sounded  like  'Onawaminthy.'  I  wanted  to  know  how 
they  spelled  it,  but  they  said  they  didn't.  It  was  their  way 
of  pronouncing  the  name  of  the  place  where  they  found  him. 
I  decided  to  call  him  Toussaint,  but  Toussaint  has  contracted 
into  plain  <Tac.' " 

Miss  Raeburn  remembered  the  form  first.  She  would  not 
let  him  see  all  the  answers  that  she  set  down — some  of  the 
questions  must  have  been  intimate — but  Andy  was  permitted 
to  help  with  others.  They  showed  that  she  was  one  of  many 
players  who  had  volunteered  to  come  abroad  and  make  a  the 
atrical  tour  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  huts  throughout  France ;  they 
showed,  too,  that  she  was  living  in  a  hotel  near  1'Etoile. 

VI 

He  walked  there  with  her.  They  went  up  the  Avenue  de 
1'Opera  to  the  Louvre,  under  the  sandsack-protected  arch 
commemorative  of  Napoleon's  Teutonic  victories  and  so 
through  the  Tuileries  Gardens  and  across  the  Place  de  la  Con- 


VICTOKIOUS  81 

corde.  A  crimson  sun  was  setting  somewhere  behind  the  Troc- 
ade"ro;  through  a  light  mist,  risen  from  the  Seine,  the  gilt 
dome  of  the  Invalides  shone  yellow;  against  the  rosy  sky  the 
Ferris  Wheel  stood  out  in  silhouette,  and  the  web-like  fila 
ments  of  the  Tour  Eiffel  wavered  upward  to  the  pale  zenith. 

Andy  found  it  amazingly  easy  to  talk  to  her.  She  had  a 
modesty  not  always  to  be  found  among  members  of  her  pro 
fession;  she  spoke  little  of  the  stage  and  less  of  herself,  but 
there  glowed  from  her  those  soft  fires  of  youth  which  melted 
reserve:  he  told  her  all  about  his  work;  he  gave  to  this  new 
acquaintance  shy  glimpses  of  an  idealism  that  he  had  never 
knowingly  vouchsafed  to  any  friend,  save  Blunston. 

"I'm  afraid  about  my  French,"  she  said.  "I've  never  been 
over  before,  and  I  learned  all  the  French  I  know  in  New 
Orleans  and  at  school." 

"This  is  my  first  trip,  too/'  laughed  Andy,  "but  I  don't 
have  any  trouble  with  my  French;  it's  the  Frenchmen's 
French  that  bothers  me." 

She  smiled.  He  thought  her  smile  entrancingly  strange, 
because,  sweet  as  it  was,  it  left  untouched  the  depths  of  her 
eyes. 

They  had  climbed  the  leafy  Champs  Elysees,  crossed 
1'Etoile  and  left  the  glory  of  the  white  Arc  upon  their  right. 
Miss  Eaeburn  stopped  before  the  entrance  to  her  hotel;  the 
last  beams  of  the  sunset  lingered  in  her  hair. 

"Good  night,"  she  said. 

She  put  out  her  white  hand  again,  and  he  took  it  and  bent 
over  it. 

"Good  night,"  said  Andy. 

It  was  the  hand  to  salute  which  he  had  dreamed  of  death 
as  a  price  not  too  dear.  He  hesitated,  then  bent  lower  above 
it.  It  had  the  fragrance  of  blossoms. 

Ever  so  slightly,  her  fingers  tightened  upon  his.  It  was 
her  sign  of  dismissal.  He  released  the  hand  unkissed,  bowed 
again  and  turned  away  toward  the  Arc  de  Triomphe. 

Soon  he  saw  that  he  seemed  to  be  treading  the  pavements 
of  the  rue  du  Faubourg  St.  Honore.  But  he  knew  that,  really, 
he  was  walking  on  the  clouds. 


82  VICTORIOUS 

yn 

They  saw  many  places  together,  but  liked  best  the  incense- 
laden  hush  of  the  old  churches,  where  Andy  always  lingered 
before  a  newly  sculptured  Jeanne  d'Arc :  the  echoing  quiet  of 
St.  Germain-l'Auxerrois,  the  lofty  vaulting  of  St.  Etienne- 
du-Mont  and  the  ancient  nave  of  St.  Germain-des-Pres. 
There  were  intimate  little  luncheons  at  queer  little  restau 
rants,  where  they  regarded  themselves  as  the  only  aliens 
entitled  to  places,  and  where  the  lad  glowered  at  any  uni 
formed  American  or  Briton  that,  entering,  cast  a  casual 
glance  toward  Sylvia.  In  brief,  while  winter  unobservably 
drew  nearer,  and  the  player  waited  for  the  arrangements  for 
her  work,  and  while  the  correspondent  wrote  articles  and 
letters  home  every  night  before  turning  to  bed  in  his  Palais 
Eoyal  garret,  both  were  happy,  and  neither,  most  likely, 
knew  why. 

Andy's  attitude  was  one  of  reverence  only:  lie  was  alto 
gether  unaware  that  he  was  perilously  progressing  toward 
love-making,  and  Sylvia,  it  is  to  be  supposed,  set  down  his 
shining  gaze  and  often  trembling  voice  to  the  enthusiasm  of 
a  young  man  sharing  the  delights  of  his  first  Paris  with  an 
equally  inexperienced  traveler  from  his  own  country.  He 
would  have  told  you — if  he  did  not,  indeed,  knock  you  down 
for  asking  an  impertinent  question — that  he  was  as  far  be 
neath  the  radiant  being  at  his  side  as  any  male  human  being 
could  be,  and  that  he  would  no  more  think  of  saying  he  loved 
her  than  contemplate  throwing  dice  on  the  high-altar  of  Notre 
Dame;  his  companion  would  have  declared  that  there  was 
still  room  for  friendship  in  a  very  puzzling  world. 

Anybody  familiar  with  the  Americans  in  France  would 
have  seen  nothing  remarkable  in  Andy's  state  of  mind — any 
American,  that  is,  who  was  of  sufficiently  philosophic  temper 
to  be  an  observer  of  his  compatriots  and  not  a  participant  in 
their  mood. 

"What  had  happened  to  Andy  was  only  what  had  hap 
pened,  in  fact,  to  most  of  the  men  that  the  war  for 
ideals  had  brought  overseas;  it  was  a  schesis  of  exalta- 


yiCTOEIOUS  83 

tion  common  to  nearly  all  the  arrived  volunteers  and  to 
many  of  the  conscripts  that  were  to  follow,  and  like  other 
forms  of  exaltation,  it  was  ready  to  be  turned  in  any  of  a 
dozen  ways.  Sending  him  across  the  ocean  and  keeping  there 
the  light  in  his  eyes  and  the  fire  in  his  heart,  it  was  a  spir 
itual  possession,  and  there  was  scarcely  an  American  abroad 
that  could  not  have  passed  through  Andy's  especial  experi 
ence,  as  hundreds  did  pass  through  it,  had  the  opportunity 
ever  so  hesitantly  offered.  Left  in  America  and  Americus, 
such  men  would  have  pursued  their  even  ways  with  their 
Minnie  Taylors,  but  the  meaning  of  the  world-struggle  had 
come  to  them,  and  the  days  of  the  Minnie  Taylors  were  pass 
ing.  No  Minnie  could  have  symbolized  what  Sylvia  symbol 
ized  to  Andy ;  seeing  her  first  as  he  was  about  to  sail,  dream 
ing  of  her  here  and  here  recovering  her  actual  presence,  he 
found  her  become  to  him  what  his  flag,  glimpsed  always  for 
ward,  is  to  the  fighting  soldier;  she  was  what  once  was  the 
Cross  in  the  crusaders'  skies.  Our  men  in  France  were  again 
as  little  children;  they  believed  in  all  those  things  in  which 
all  men  far  from  the  familiar  features  of  home  believe — in 
angels  and  in  fairies,  in  the  simple  and  the  primitive  — 
they  were  ready  to  believe  in  anything:  yet  that  was  their 
secret;  not  confessed  to  one  another,  hidden  beneath  rough 
words  and  homeric  laughter,  concealed  behind  grumbling  en 
durance  and  heroic  bravery,  it  was  the  reaction  of  their  souls 
against  the  too  horrible  materialism  of  Bellona. 

VIII 

Late  one  afternoon,  Andy,  looking  for  a  new  restaurant  to 
which  to  take  Sylvia  next  day,  happened  into  a  quiet  eating- 
place — that  place  was  the  Restaurant  Laperouse,  no  less — on 
the  Quai  des  Grands-Augustins.  Passing  the  humble  hall,  he 
was  about  to  climb  the  stairs  when  he  saw  an  open  doorway 
to  a  small  private  dining-room :  there  was  a  table  heaped  with 
the  impedimenta  of  an  hour's  liqueurs  and  coffee,  and  before 
it  a  somewhat  unsteady  American  officer  embracing  a  slip 
of  a  girl. 


84:  VICTORIOUS 

The  laughing  girl  peeped  around  the  officer:  she  was 
swarthy,  but  brilliantly  rouged.  Her  hat  was  awry,  her  black 
hair  tumbled  and  her  black  eyes  and  thin  cheeks  aflame;  her 
lips  were  vermilion.  She  gave  the  officer  a  smacking  kiss, 
and  then  darted  by  his  protesting  figure,  flicked  past  Andy 
and  disappeared  into  the  street.  For  all  her  merriment,  she 
bore  with  her,  revealed,  an  old  sorrow. 

The  officer,  guffawing,  started  to  follow  her.  Face  to  face 
with  Andy,  he  came  to  an  abrupt  stop.  He  was  Lieutenant 
Garcia. 

"Wha'  sort  o'  hell  you  tryV  raise  here?"  he  thickly  de 
manded. 

There  was  a  touch  of  unhealthy  pink  in  his  face. 

"I'm  not  raising  any  hell,"  Andy  said.    "Are  you?" 

Garcia  saw  the  awkwardness  of  his  position;  he  attempted 
mollification. 

"Jus'  a  good  time/'  he  said.  He  smiled  ingratiatingly. 
"Fel's  wife  clear  'cross  ocean  has  t'enjoy  'self  once  in  a  while, 
don't  he?"  He  fumbled  his  arm  around  Andy's  shoulder. 
"An'  I'm  the  candy-kid  can  pick  the  peaches,  Brownie.  I'll 
put  you  next,  you  want  to." 

Andy  drew  himself  free. 

"I'm  busy,"  he  said. 

"But  look  here."  Garcia  stumbled  toward  him.  "Look  at 
these,  Brownie."  His  admiration  for  his  powers  of  conquest 
overcame,  in  the  rapidly  shifting  moods  of  the  drunkard,  his 
fear  of  exposure.  He  drew  a  crumpled  packet  from  his  blouse. 
"Tha'  girl's  crazy  'bout  me — got  her  crazy  'bout  me.  Lemme 
read  you  letters  she  sent  me  when  I  was  Neufchateau." 

"No,  thanks,"  said  Andy. 

He  wanted  only  to  get  away.   He  turned  to  the  door. 

His  withdrawal  reawakened  Garcia's  fears. 

"Keep  't  dark,  Brownie,"  he  said. 

"All  right,"  said  Andy. 

"Won'  do  make  talk.  Of'cer  an'  gen'man,  y'know.  You're 
good  fel',  Brownie.  Mum's  word." 

"I'll  keep  it  dark,"  said  Andy,  and  got  away. 


CHAPTER  V 

TELLS  OF  A  LITTLE  TOWN  THAT  GOES  TO  WAR;  OF  A  WOMAN 
WITH  A  RED  CROSS  ;  OF  A  GIRL  WITH  CHINA-BLUE  EYES,  AND 
OF  A  MOTHER  THAT  DID  NOT  HAVE  A  SERVICE-STAR 

BLUNSTON,  installed  in  the  old  house  on  Second  Street, 
found  at  least  a  certain  comfort  there.  He  loved  every  room : 
the  wide  hall,  running  the  width  of  the  building,  from  which 
rose  the  seventeenth  century  stairway;  the  prim  parlor  with 
its  saddle-back  chairs;  even  the  austere  bedrooms  overhead, 
and  the  attic,  the  floor-boards  of  which  had  been  left  unnailed 
by  the  builders  those  two  hundred  and  sixty-odd  years  ago. 
He  liked  to  work  on  the  back-porch  that  had  been  meant  for 
a  front  one,  where,  after  he  had  been  wakened  by  the  break 
fast-chatter  of  the  sparrows  in  the  ivy  around  his  window,  he 
was  sure  to  hear  a  red-headed  woodpecker  tapping  at  the 
smokehouse  apple-tree  and,  if  he  was  early  enough,  to  catch 
sight  of  the  green  back  and  white  belly  of  a  tree-swallow. 

He  did  not  want  to  see  many  people.  His  cousins  he  chatted 
with  daily,  and  he  listened  to  their  father's  reminiscences  of 
the  early  'sixties  that,  stirred  by  the  present  war,  were  directed 
at  the  old  soldier's  wife.  Sarah  he  called  on,  because  one  of 
the  reasons  for  remaining  in  Americus  was  the  vague  one  of 
"looking  after"  her;  but  he  knew  the  Tollens  pride  too  thor 
oughly  to  offer  any  practical  assistance,  and  whether  she  was 
not  beyond  the  desire  for  social  help  he  could  not  yet  de 
termine. 

He  was  seated  on  the  front-porch  that  used  to  be  a  back- 
porch  when  Minnie  Taylor  turned  off  the  street  and  up  the 
graveled  path  and  stood  there  ogling  him  with  her  china-blue 
eyes. 

"Are  you  Mr.  Blunston?"  she  asked,  and  then  lowered  her 
eyes.  She  knew  very  well,  of  course,  that  he  was,  but  she  had 

85 


86  VICTORIOUS 

been  taught  that  it  is  not  polite  to  begin  a  conversation  by 
touching  upon  that  conversation's  purpose. 

Blunston  bowed.  "And  you  are  Miss  Taylor,"  he  said.  He 
wondered  what  in  the  world  she  was  doing  here.  "Let  me 
get  you  a  chair." 

"Isn't  it  warm?"  said  Minnie.  She  fanned  her  pink  face 
with  a  damp  handkerchief. 

He  admitted  that  it  was. 

"I  don't  know  when  I've  perspired  as  much  as  this  sum 
mer,"  his  pretty  caller  continued. 

Blunston  wanted  to  say  something.  The  only  thing  he 
could  think  of  saying  was:  "Indeed?" 

"No.  It's  perfectly  dreadful.  But  I  guess  it's  good  for  the 
soldiers." 

"Yes,"  said  Blunston.  "Oh,  yes."  He  was  afraid  that  he 
might  seem  rude  to  her.  "The  very  thing,"  he  said. 

Minnie  gave  him  her  full  face.  She  smiled;  he  saw  that 
her  dimples  were  delightful. 

"And  that  ought  to  hurry  things,"  she  said.  "At  least,  I 
hope  it  will.  I  so  want  us  to  win  soon.  I  just  loathe  those 
Germans,  don't  you,  Mr.  Blunston  ?" 

"Quite."  Blunston  found  his  hand  passing  over  his  weather- 
beaten  face.  It  was  late  afternoon^  he  wondered  if  the  iron- 
gray  stubble  showed.  But  he  wondered  more  what  she  was 
here  for. 

"Still,"  said  Minnie,  "I  don't  think  it's  going  to  be  long,  do 
you?" 

"Long?    .    .    .    Oh,  the  war?" 

"Yes,  but  I  think  it's  going  to  be  dreadfully  hard  for  us. 
They  say  food  will  be  dear  because  we've  got  to  send  it  all 
over  there.  And  there's  hardly  any  farmers  at  market  any 
more — hardly  any  young  ones,  anyhow.  And  now  even 
Chrissly  Shuman's  gone.  Did  you  know  Chrissly  Shuman, 
Mr.  Blunston?" 

"I'm  afraid  I  never    .    .    /' 

WHAT  was  she  here  for? 

"Was  it  about  Mr.  Shuman  that  you  wanted  to  see    ...  ?" 

Minnie's  frank  laughter  discovered  good  teeth. 


VICTOKIOUS  87 

"Oh,  no,  Mr.  Blunston.  Chrissly's  a  regular  hay-seed.  His 
family's  Amish !  I — "  She  drew  the  toe  of  one  trim  shoe  in 
ward  and  made  marks  with  it  on  the  floor  of  the  porch.  She 
watched  the  toe  intently.  "I  saw  in  the  Spy  where  it  said 
Andy  Brown  had  arrived  safe  over  there."  Minnie  was 
blushing ! 

What  Blunston  did  not  know  about  her  in  particular  was 
that,  finding  Andy  become  a  local  hero,  she  wanted  to  recap 
ture  the  boy.  What  he  correctly  surmised  was  that  her  present 
emotion,  whatever  else  it  might  be,  was  sincere.  He  wished 
to  heaven  that  it  possessed  any  quality  but  that.  Andy !  He 
had  feared  something  of  this  sort.  Sentimentality ;  calf-love : 
of  course  the  relationship  had  been  quite  pure;  had  it  been 
less  so,  it  had,  perhaps,  been  less  dangerous.  But  this — • 

His  consternation  held  him  silent. 

"I'd  been — well,  been  meaning  to  write  him,  only  I  wanted 
to  make  sure  whether  he'd  want  me  to,  and  besides,  I  didn't 
know  his  address." 

To  look  at  her  was  one  thing,  to  hear  from  her  was  another. 
Blunston  had  a  terrible  vision  of  what  her  letters  would  be: 
their  chronicle  of  the  weather,  of  the  minor  happenings  of  the 
minor  town  that  Andy  would  of  course  be  glad  to  get,  of  the 
record  of  the  secretions  of  Minnie's  heart — could  it  be  that 
Andy  would  want  to  hear  about  them?  There  had  long  been 
growing  a  good  deal  of  the  father  in  Blunston:  it  assaulted 
her  now: 

"If  he  didn't  himself  tell  you  Ms  address    .    .    ." 

"You  see" — again  the  diagrams  with  the  boot-toe — "I  and 
Andy  were  friends.  We  were  real  good  friends."  She  looked 
up  quickly — but  more  quickly  down.  "We'd  been  going  to 
gether  for  'most  a  year."  The  blush  deepened.  She  visibly 
struggled,  but  she  brought  forth  at  last  the  reason  of  her  mis 
sion.  "You  went  to  New  York  and  all  with  him.  Mr.  Blun 
ston,  I  was  wondering  if  he  told  you  he  was  mad  at  me." 

Blunston  felt  only  the  need  of  gaining  time. 
"Because  I  wasn't  there  when  he  came  to  say  good-by," 
she  went  on.  "It  wasn't  my  fault,  really.  How  was  I  to  know 
he  was  going  right  away  ?  But  Andy  was  always  so  sensitive." 


88  VICTOKIOUS 

Blunston  looked  down  into  the  round,  china-blue  eyes. 

"I  think  you  might  tell  me,"  said  Minnie.  "I  feel  kind  of 
responsible  for  Andy's  being  over  there,  anyhow." 

"You  feel  a  responsibility?"  echoed  the  amazed  Blunston. 

"Yes.  I'd  been  kind  of  uppish  with  him,  and  I  thought,  if 
I  hadn't  been,  along  toward  the  last,  maybe  he  wouldn't  have 
gone." 

Looking  at  it  from  one  point  of  view,  Blunston  could  be 
sorry  that  he  had  to  say  to  her  what  he  must.  Still,  here  was 
no  time  for  weakness :  he  had  to  think  of  the  boy. 

"From  the  moment  we  left  here  until  I  saw  the  last  of  him 
at  the  dock,  Andy  never  once  mentioned  your  name,  Miss 
Taylor." 

"Is  that  right  ?"  asked  Minnie.    She  had  risen. 

Blunston,  rising,  bowed  assent. 

"Poor  Andy,"  Minnie  said:  "he  took  it  too  hard  to  talk 
about  it.  Well,"  she  added,  "I  guess  I  must  be  going." 

'Tm  sorry   .   .    ." 

"And  you  were  pretty  thick  with  him?" 

"Pretty  thick." 

"Well,"  said  Minnie,  "good  afternoon." 

He  watched  her  undulating  back.  She  went  jauntily.  She 
was  a  good  loser. 

Misunderstanding  the  true  inwardness  of  the  situation, 
Blunston  was  troubled.  Yet  he  couldn't  write  to  Andy^  about 
it,  and  he  wouldn't  talk  about  it  to  Sarah. 

n 

Americus  wilted  under  the  late  heat;  like  other  towns,  it 
strained  its  ears  to  catch  each  rumor  from  Washington, 
its  eyes  to  pierce  those  heavy  mists  of  man's  own  making 
which  the  War  Department  hung  between  the  people  and 
the  American  zone  in  Prance.  The  iron-mills,  after  long 
suspension  in  the  days  of  peace,  were  working  again  at  full- 
time;  one  by  one,  the  local  industries  were  receiving  govern 
ment  orders  for  finished  products,  and  if  taxes  and  the  cost 
of  living  continued  to  rise,  at  least  there  was  more  money  to 


VICTORIOUS  89 

pay  the  piper,  and  expenses  were  always  a  week  behind  raises 
in  wages. 

Gossip  dealt  largely  with  the  boys  in  training.  Americus 
had  seen  its  drafted  men  march  to  the  station  behind  the  Sil 
ver  Cornet  Band :  awkward,  but  earnest  lads,  setting  out  first 
to  the  Georgia  that  seemed  almost  as  far  away  as  France.  For 
that  first  queer  draft-day  had  come  and  gone,  when  suddenly 
serious  men  stood  in  restless  groups  like  men  on  trial  that  at 
tend  the  return  of  the  jury,  and  waited,  before  the  Spy  office, 
for  the  pasting  in  the  window  of  the  sheets  of  paper  on  which 
cabalistic  numbers  were  scrawled. 

"I'm  ready  enough,"  had  said  little  Harry  Kurtz,  as  he  saw; 
his  number  go  up;  "only  I'm  kind  o'  worried  about  my  ter 
rier,  Fan:  she's  goin'  t'have  puppies  inside  of  a  month,  an' 
nobody  likes  Fan  at  home,  'cept  me." 

Some  of  the  boys  wouldn't  "set  for  their  photographs"  be 
cause  of  a  superstition  that  most  men  who  were  killed  had  left 
at  home  pictures  of  themselves  in  uniform.  Already  in  many 
a  window  was  the  placard  announcing  that  "A  Man  From 
This  Home  is  in  the  Service  of  His  Country";  and  service- 
flags  began  to  appear  like  stars  in  a  cloud-clearing  sky. 

The  Greek  bootblack  inadvertently  inserted  in  his  phono 
graph  an  old  disk  that  turned  out  to  contain  I  Didn't  Raise 
My  Boy  to  Be  a  Soldier,  and  the  town  boycotted  him.  A! 
German-born  minister  was  heard  speaking,  on  Hickory  Street, 
the  language  of  his  native  land,  and  the  high-school  pupils 
waited  on  him  and  compelled  him  to  display  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  above  his  doorway.  Doctor  Dawson,  the  Episcopal  rec 
tor,  was  torn  by  doubt  as  to  whether,  since  St.  Michael  fought 
the  Dragon  in  Heaven,  God's  clergy  should  not  now  take  up 
material  swords  against  the  "old  serpent"  upon  earth,  caused 
a  large  board  to  be  placed  on  the  wall  of  St.  Paul's  just  above 
the  font,  and  had  inscribed  thereon  the  names  of  his  flock  that 
were  in  the  army  or  navy;  and  pretty  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  or 
ganized  and  vigorously  led  a  series  of  what  she  called  "Com 
munity  Sings." 

Indeed,  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  took  the  reins  of  most  of  the  lo 
cal  war-activities.  Things  called  "drives"  were  made  for  the 


90  VICTOKIOUS 

Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  afterward  for  War-Savings  Stamps,  which 
that  young  lady  energetically  drove.  A  chicken  corn-soup  sup 
per  for  the  benefit  of  the  Serbian  sufferers  Mrs.  Ealph  G.  Bol- 
ingbroke  directed.  She  rather  tactlessly  gave,  on  prayer-meet 
ing  night,  a  "Subscription  Street-Dance  and  Carnival"  for 
the  Soldiers'  Library  Fund;  and  the  parade  of  players  to 
a  baseball  game,  arranged  to  raise  money  for  French  orphans, 
was  headed  by  Mrs.  Kalph  G.  Bolingbroke;  but  her  sacrifice 
of  conservative  sentiment  was  obviously  only  with  the  purpose 
of  keeping  the  town  to  its  straight  path  of  duty. 

"We've  got  to  have  a  headquarters,"  she  informed  her  hus 
band,  on  the  evening  when  the  idea  of  a  Red  Cross  chapter 
occurred  to  her,  and  the  dimples  in  her  pretty  merry  face  did 
not  blunt  the  sharpness  of  her  glance.  "Why  don't  you  lend 
us  that  old  brick  place  opposite  the  Opera  House  ?" 

They  were  sitting  on  the  porch  overlooking  their  lawn,  with 
its  mass  of  foreign  trees  and  its  Victorian  statuary  separating 
them  well  from  the  passers-by. 

To  put  it  across  the  other,  Ealph  picked  up  one  long  lank 
leg  in  both  hands:  "The  Tidd  house?" 

"  'Tisn't  the  Tidds'.  You  know  well  enough  it's  yours." 

"People  by  that  name  used  to  live  there.  Father  always 
called  it  the  Tidd  house." 

"Well,  will  you  lend  us  that  ?  It  didn't  cost  you  anything," 
'Mrs.  Ralph  snapped. 

"Father  got  it  from  the  Tidds  for  a  bad  debt,  and  they'd 
got  it  by  the  right  of  adverse  possession." 

"I  don't  care  how  anybody  got  it:  will  you  lend  it  for  our 
iRed  Cross?" 

This  was  the  house  which  Blunston  had  noted  as  displaying 
one  of  the  marked  changes  in  Americus.  It  stood  in  what 
was  now  the  business-center  of  the  town,  among  a  group  of 
prosperous  shops;  but  Ralph,  who  could  find  no  tenant  that 
wanted  to  make  his  home  there,  had  not  thought  it  wise  to 
remodel  and  let  it  as  a  store :  he  wanted  to  sell  it  and,  never 
receiving  what  he  considered  an  adequate  price — though  some 
of  the  offers  were  high — he  permitted  it  to  fall  into  disrepair. 
His  wife,  who  hated  all  old  things,  disliked  the  Tidd  house ; 


VICTORIOUS  91 

but  it  had  fair-sized  rooms  with  large  open  fireplaces  and 
would  well  serve  her  present  purpose. 

She  got  most  of  the  things  she  wanted  in  life,  and  by  the 
means  that  she  got  others  she  got  this.  Ealph  lent  the  Tidd 
house,  and  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  superintended  its  overhauling. 
Within  a  fortnight,  the  local  chapter  of  the  Bed  Cross  was 
busily  installed.  The  band  stood  outside  on  the  opening  night 
and,  after  Ralph's  speech  of  presentation,  played,  very  well, 
too,  Juaniia,  in  subtle  honor  of  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Ealph  was 
by  way  of  being  a  bride. 

The  chapter,  in  spite  of  inevitable  drawbacks,  prospered. 
The  townswomen  responded  to  Mrs.  Bolingbroke's  call,  as 
Americus  always  did  respond  to  calls  for  service:  there  was 
really  a  good  work  to  be  accomplished,  and  there  was  a  lovely 
uniform  to  be  donned.  Mrs.  Ealph's  motor-mind,  her  hearty 
domination  and  boundless  energy  at  starting  movements, 
achieved  much :  these  and  the  uniforms.  The  necessary  humor 
was  supplied  by  an  impulsiveness  as  quick  to  anger  as  to  kind 
ness  and  rising  from  the  same  source.  A  member  that  touched 
a  chair  resented  being  publicly  told  to  wash  her  hands  before 
proceeding  to  roll  bandages,  and  a  resignation  and  a  broken 
friendship  resulted.  Minnie  Taylor  wore  her  uniform  out-of- 
doors,  probably  because  she  rightly  thought  it  becoming,  and 
Mrs.  Bolingbroke  reprimanded  her  in  a  manner  that  made 
her  cry. 

Miss  Hattie  Lloyd  severely  knitted  socks  in  her  own  home 
and  sent  them  to  the  Tidd  house  by  the  little  girl  that  lived 
next  door.  She  had  regarded  Mrs.  Ealph's  married  activities 
as  trespass  ab  mitio.  The  first  Mrs.  Ealph — though  dead,  poor 
woman — was  the  only  one  Miss  Hattie  would  recognize.  Be 
sides,  hadn't  she  known  the  second  Mrs.  Ealph's  father  only 
too  well  as  a  dentist,  who  had  extracted  a  perfectly  good 
tooth  for  a  decayed  one? 

m 

Prom  France,  Andy's  letters,  crowding  upon  one  another's 
heels,  showed  him  in  a  rapturous  delight  and  in  a  curiosity; 


92  VICTOKIOUS 

no  less  rapt.  There  were  so  many  "firsts"  to  record  :  his  first 
sight  of  the  ocean  ;  his  first  sight  of  Paris,  his  first  apprehen 
sions  of  France.  "Just  the  ocean/'  he  wrote  :  "I  went  on  deck, 
and  where  there'd  been  the  land  there  was  the  ocean,  and 
nothing  else,  all  the  way  to  the  sky.  It's  old  to  you,  but  it's 
all  new  to  me.  A  lieutenant  that's  censoring  letters  told  me 
one  of  the  men,  a  fellow  from  Kansas,  wrote  to  his  mother 
that  'the  ocean  is  just  like  Bellows'  Creek,  only  bigger/  and 
I  guess  he's  about  right." 

He  wanted,  later,  to  know  why  the  French  did  so  many 
things  differently  from  us,  but  in  some  points  he  found  rural 
France  not  at  issue  with  Americus.  "An  army-doctor  down 
at  the  camp,"  he  said,  "had  fits  because  the  villages  have  open 
drainage  —  said  it  was  so  bad  and  so  French  —  and  when  I  told 
him  it  was  American,  too,  because  we  had  it  in  my  home 
town,  he  had  worse  fits:  he  was  one  of  those  New  York  fel 
lows  that  haven't  ever  been  where  there  weren't  porcelain  tubs 
to  every  room."  Andy,  it  developed,  had  always  thought  of 
the  Grands  Boulevards  as  one  street  and  went  searching  for  it 
from  the  Boulevard  des  Capucines  to  the  Place  de  la  Ee- 
publique. 

Blunston  said  to  himself  that  here,  at  all  events,  was  no 
lovesickness  for  Minnie  ;  but  there  was  also  no  mention  of  the 
war.  Was  Andy  entirely  carried  away  by  these  "firsts"  —  en 
joying  them  at  the  expense  of  his  work  ? 

Then  came  the  first  article,  and  it  set  Blunston's  mind  at 
rest.  It  was  so  unassuming  that  it  was  well  done.  Blunston 
thought  that  it  might  almost  go  without  rewriting.  He 
changed  it,  however,  to  conform  with  his  own  style. 


Although  she  had  snown  it  to  nobody,  and  least  of  all  to 
Blunston  —  although  she  would  have  gone  to  the  rack  rather 
than  show  it  —  Sarah,  whatever  her  grief  at  parting  from  her 
boy,  had  been  even  prouder  of  Andy's  going  to  France  than 
of  any  other  event  in  a  career  that  had  always  been  a  source 
of  gratification  to  her.  She  secretly  liked,  too,  the  reflected 


YICTOEIOUS  93 

glory  of  Andy's  local  distinction  in  being  the  first  lad  from 
Americus  to  go  to  the  war.  It  reached  her,  to  be  sure — that 
reflection — only  through  her  immediate  neighbors — for  the 
ultramondinists  of  the  town  had  always  stopped  their  liking 
for  Andy  at  Andy;  but  it  had  produced  a  cheering  glow  in 
slumbering  embers,  and  the  glow  had  risen  to  a  pale  flame 
when  her  boy's  postcards  and  letters  began  to  arrive,  marked 
"Passed  by  Censor"  for  anybody  to  see,  and  dated — by  her 
own  son,  too ! — "Somewhere  in  France."  She  saw  the  service- 
flags  go  up  in  the  windows  about  her  little  house  and  wished 
that  she  could  hang  out  a  service-flag,  too ;  but  about  this  time 
she  began  to  fear  that  a  flag  would  make  for  comment  from 
mothers  whose  sons  were  in  the  ranks,  and  then,  treading  on 
the  heels  of  this  doubt,  came  Mrs.  Bolingbroke's  organization 
of  a  Eed  Cross  chapter  and  the  fact  that  Sarah  was  not  asked 
to  join  it. 

There  was  no  reason  why  she  should  be  asked :  for  that  good 
work  people  are  supposed  to  volunteer.  Nevertheless,  Sarah, 
in  the  course  of  a  rare  daylight  excursion  to  the  shops  on  Elm 
Avenue,  saw  Mrs.  Bolingbroke's  limousine  stop  and  heard  Mrs. 
Bolingbroke  call  out  an  invitation  that  was  phrased  like  a 
demand  to  three  shopping  housewives  whom  she  audibly  knew 
by  name,  but  with  whom  she  patently  could  not  be  socially 
intimate.  People  that  have  been  long  avoided  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  they  should  be  sought:  Sarah  went  home  re 
solved  never  to  join  the  Eed  Cross  and  never  again  to  dream 
of  a  service-flag. 

It  is  only  in  cities  that  the  descent  to  Avernus  is  easy;  in 
a  small  town  it  is  a  painful  thing  to  pursue  that  process  which 
Miss  Hattie  had  spoken  of  as  "coming  down  in  the  world." 
Scarcely  had  she  made  it  before  Sarah  Tollens  knew  her  mar 
riage  to  Phil  Brown  was  a  mistake.  She  would  gladly  have 
borne  its  vicarious  effects  had  its  direct  cause  been  worth,  but 
Phil  was  an  outrageous  waster  and  lost  little  time  in  proving 
it.  She  was  relieved  when  she  heard  of  his  death,  and  yet  his 
death  did  not  relieve  her  of  what  his  life  had  done. 

Her  punishment  for  the  alliance  had  been  immediate  and 
cruel.  The  consummation  of  her  romance  led  disillusionment 


94:  VICTORIOUS 

by  the  hand,  and  social  obliteration  hung  upon  the  skirts  of 
disillusion.  There  were  no  post-nuptial  calls  on  the  Browns 
and  no  invitations.  The  people  she  used  to  know  still  bowed, 
to  her  when  they  passed  her  on  the  street,  or  after  service  as 
she  left  St.  Paul's  Church,  but  it  was  only  on  the  street,  or 
in  connection  with  some  church  activity  that  she  met  them. 
It  was  not  long  before,  mistaking  embarrassed  greetings  for 
intended  patronage,  she  gave  up  the  church. 

Years  ago — oh,  just  at  the  first! — she  was  wheeling  little 
Andy  in  his  baby-carriage  along  Hickory  Street  when  one  of 
her  former  friends  met  her. 

"Why,  it's  really  quite  a  nice  baby  I" 

Into  that  revelation  of  her  expectations  Andy's  unlooked-for 
favors  betrayed  the  well-meaning  woman.  It  told  Sarah  much. 

Instead  of  conquering  the  disease  by  moving  to  another 
town,  Sarah's  pride  kept  her  in  Americus.  It  was,  like  most, 
illogical;  it  could  keep  her  face  to  her  enemies  without;  it 
would  not  save  her  from  deterioration  within.  She  became  a 
seamstress  that  would  not  accept  work  from  those  best  able  to 
pay  well  for  it ;  she  lost  her  chance  of  social  regeneration ;  she 
saved  her  air  of  reserve  and  the  appearance  of  not  feeling  the 
pangs  of  her  trouble :  her  pride,  in  other  words,  saved  her  pre 
cisely  itself — a  doubtful  treasure,  as  one  grows  older. 

Toward  Blunston,  while  continuing  to  care  for  him,  she  had 
nevertheless  nourished  a  certain  resentment.  He  stood  at 
home  in  her  mind  for  all  the  pleasant  things  that  had  been 
denied  her;  Blunston  away  from  home  she  would  hear  of 
through  a  casual  street-word  from  Miss  Hattie  Lloyd,  who 
told  others  she  "never  saw  her,"  yet  ever  had  for  Sarah  some 
word  of  Blunston's  material  success.  She  was  glad  that  he 
was  now  in  Americus,  but  she  did  not  love  him ;  she  liked  the 
friend,  yet  mistrusted  the  situation  that  made  his  friendship 
possible. 

Andy's  blindness  to  her  faults  kept  him  only  vaguely  con 
scious  of  the  social  decline;  seldom  seeing  the  inside  of  bet 
ter  houses,  he  did  not  realize  the  condition  of  hers ;  she  never 
complained,  and  her  continual  reserve  gave  him  the  impres 
sion  of  a  vast  strength  behind  it;  he  loved  her  for  the  best 


VICTORIOUS 


95 


of  all  love-reasons :  because  she  loved  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
her  love  for  him  was  the  passion  of  her  life;  he  was  all  that 
she  had  left,  and  she  gave  herself  unstintingly. 

Yet  her  own  reflected  glory  always  came  to  her  as  a  sur 
prise.  On  a  summer  afternoon,  the  Reverend  Doctor  Dawson, 
of  St.  Paul's,  called  at  her  house. 

"You  seem  to  have  given  us  up,  Mrs.  Brown,"  he  said,  "but 
your  name  was  on  the  books  of  the  church  when  I  came  here, 
and  of  course  I've  never  removed  it.  They  tell  me,  too,  that 
Andy  used  to  sing  in  the  choir.  Now,  we  have  a  service-flag 
in  the  church  with  a  star  on  it  for  every  one  of  our  boys  in 
his  country's  service,  and  we  have  a  board  on  the  wall  with 
their  names  on  it.  Andy's  doing  one  kind  of  work  for  Amer 
ica,  and  a  dangerous  work  it  will  be,  too.  I'm  going  to  put 
up  Andy's  star  and  Andy's  name." 

Sarah's  sallow  cheeks  became  pink. 

"I  wouldn't,"  she  said. 

"I'm  going  to,"  said  Doctor  Dawson. 

He  did  not  bring  Sarah  back  to  services,  but  one  week-day, 
seeing  the  church-door  open,  she  stole  inside  and  stood,  a 
weary,  black  figure,  long  looking  at  that  list  of  names : 


IN  THEIR  COUNTRY'S  SERVICE: 
ANDREW  MCKINLEY  BROWN 


She  wondered  which  star  in  the  flag  that  hung  overhead 
was  Andy's. 


CHAPTER  VI 

TAKES  ANDY  BROWN"  TO  THE  TRENCHES;  PURSUES  LOVE,  AND 
PLEDGES  FAITH  TO  A  HIGH  BUT  DIFFICULT  CAUSE 

ANDY  was  rising  disconsolately  from  a  dinner  at  the  cor 
respondents'  inn  when  he  heard  a  mighty  howdydo  in  the 
office.  He  strolled  thither. 

Madame  la  proprietaire,  who  had  received  generals  with 
tranquillity,  was  reduced  to  a  lump  of  agitated  jelly.  Jean, 
the  most  ancient  of  the  inn's  superannuated  supernumeraries, 
was  swaying  under  the  weight  of  two  great  handbags  slung 
by  a  strap  across  his  emaciated  shoulders;  Raoul,  a  lad  of 
seventy  years,  staggered  behind  him  with  a  big  suit-case  and 
a  plaid  steamer-rug  that  seemed  familiar  to  Andy;  back  of 
Raoul  came  Georges,  aged  fourteen,  who  supported  a  small 
toilet-box,  and  in  the  shadow  of  Georges  stood  an  empty- 
handed  American,  plainly  a  servant,  who  carried  himself 
with  a  dignity  and  besides  himself  carried  nothing  at  all. 

"Important?"  asked  all  the  maids. 

"Of  an  importance  the  highest,"  shrilled  Madame  la  pro- 
prietaire.  "He  himself  has  declared  it — and  in  a  telegram, 
my  faith !" 

"An  American?"  asked  the  maids,  fluttering. 

"From  Washington,"  said  Georges. 

"From  the  president,"  said  Madame,  conclusively.  "I  be 
lieve  well  from  M.  le  President  Vilson." 

Out  of  the  rear  of  the  excited  group  there  paced  forward 
a  pudgy  little  man  enveloped  from  ears  to  heels  in  a  fur- 
edged,  and  patently  fur-lined  overcoat.  A  fur  hat  was  pulled 
down  over  his  brows,  and  Andy  knew  him  at  once  for  his 
former  train-fellow,  Mr.  B.  Frank  McGregor,  of  Chicago. 

96 


VICTOKIOUS  97 

Andy  came  to  his  rescue  in  the  role  of  a  welcome  inter 
preter.  He  saw  to  it  that  Mr.  McGregor's  importance  lost 
nothing  through  interpretation. 

"You'll  have  dinner  with  me,  young  man/'  said  McGregor, 
after  he  had  shaken  Andy's  right  hand  in  both  of  his  own. 

"I've  just  had  mine,"  said  Andy. 

"Then  you'll  have  another,"  said  McGregor. 

He  was  a  long  time  in  his  bedroom  before  Andy  was  sum 
moned  to  the  chamber  next  door,  which  McGregor,  a  French 
colonel  having  been  dispossessed,  had  ordered  converted  into 
a  private  dining-room.  He  came  in  immaculate  (he  was  all 
but  in  evening-clothes,  thought  Andy)  and,  when  he  had  ex 
pressed  his  frank  opinion  of  French  village-inns,  he  grew 
amiable  to  the  point  of  allowing  Andy  to  forego  eating. 

"Now,  then,"  he  said,  as  he  uncorked  a  bottle  of  vin,  de 
marque  and  made  a  face  at  it  (he  would  not  suffer  a  French 
waiter  to  uncork  his  wine),  "you  look  as  if  you'd  lost  your 
best  friend.  You  know  the  story  about  the  little  boy:  his 
mother  asked  him  if  he'd  been  fighting,  and  he  told  her  'No, 
mama;  I've  been  fought/  What's  wrong?" 

Andy  was  so  full  of  his  trouble  that  it  easily  overflowed. 
The  Americans  were  in  the  trenches;  that  is,  a  few  of  them 
were  there  for  practice-work,  and  the  press-division  had  that 
afternoon  told  him  it  was  not  going  to  issue  any  correspond 
ents'  passes. 

"Can't  get  a  pass  to  the  trenches  ?"  repeated  McGregor. 
"Then  come  along  with  me." 

He  was  going  there.  He  was  down  here  mapping  one  of  the 
mysterious  back-waters  of  his  deep  stream  of  contract-placing 
and  had  decided  that  he  would  like  a  picnic-excursion  to  the 
front  line. 

"You'll  go  along  as  my  private  secretary,"  he  said.  "You 
are  my  private  secretary:  I  appoint  you  now — for  the  day." 

"They'll  never  let  me  go,"  said  Andy. 

"Leave  it  to  me."  McGregor  called  for  his  servant  and 
gave  him  a  card.  "Take  that  over  to  the  press-division's  head 
quarters,"  he  ordered.  "Now,  Mr.  Brown,  you  needn't  be 
present  at  the  interview,  but  you  needn't  worry,  either. 


98  VICTORIOUS 

There'll  be  a  car  ready  for  us  at  eight — no,  eight's  too  chilly : 
at  nine-thirty  in  the  morning/' 


McGregor  was  depressed  hy  the  ruin  of  the  villages  close 
to  the  front.  On  the  roads  there  were  no  peasants  and  only 
a  few  soldiers;  the  fields  were  lifeless,  now  dun-colored,  and 
again  retaining  some  of  the  recently  fallen  snow;  the  sky 
was  gray,  black  clouds  of  smoke  rising  here  and  there  from 
the  horizon-line ;  and  the  rattle  of  their  breathlessly  charging 
car  drowned  other  noises.  The  visitors  swung  at  last  into  a 
muddy  street  running  among  a  clump  of  battered  houses 
that  gathered  under  the  skirts  of  an  old  church. 

"This  is  the  headquarters  town/7  their  military-chauffeur 
informed  them:  all  military-chauffeurs  are  talkative  persons. 
"It  wasn't  shelled  while  the  French  held  this  sector,  but  our 
fellows  have  stirred  the  Boche  up  some.  We'd  better  put 
on  our  tin  hats,  I  guess." 

"This  helmet  makes  my  head  ache,"  said  McGregor,  almost 
before  he  had  it  on. 

"You  gotta  wear  it  anyhow,"  the  chauffeur  told  him. 

They  had  pulled  up  at  the  edge  of  the  village  beside  the 
garden-wall  of  a  chateau.  On  the  gate  was  a  sign  announcing 
that  this  chateau  was  a  general's  headquarters.  .  .  . 

An  explosion  nearly  tossed  them  from  their  seats. 

At  a  short  distance  down  the  street  the  front  of  a  house 
bellied  over  the  roadway  and  then  fell  in  a  slow  cloud  of 
dust.  Just  at  the  edge  of  the  dust-cloud  a  soldier  lay  very 
still. 

"Good  God!"  exclaimed  McGregor. 

Andy  said  nothing.  It  was  his  first  shell  and  his  first  sight 
of  injury  in  war.  He  drew  his  lips  into  a  tight  line.  Then 
he  leaped  from  the  car. 

"Hi!    Don't  go  out  there!"  cried  McGregor. 

Andy  hurried  to  the  ruin.  The  soldier  lay  in  a  welter  of 
blood,  his  face  blotted  out  by  it.  Andy  seated  himself  in 
the  road — placed  the  soldier's  head  in  his  lap — began  to  mop 


VICTORIOUS  99 

the  blood  with  his  handkerchief — began  also  to  call  for  hos 
pital-orderlies. 

There  was  no  alarm  sounded.  Not  until  several  minutes 
had  passed  did  the  military  approach  the  wounded  man. 
Then  an  officer  came  out  of  the  chateau. 

"Where's  the  litter-squad?"  he  demanded. 

An  enlisted  man  had  followed  him. 

"What's  a  litter?"  asked  the  enlisted  man. 

"A  stretcher!"  shouted  the  officer.   "Where's  a  stretcher?" 

"Hurry/'  said  Andy,  "this  man  will  die  if  you  don't 
hurry!" 

A  stretcher  was  found  at  last.  It  was  in  one  of  the  houses, 
where  it  had  lain  behind  a  door,  rolled  up.  By  the  time  it 
reached  Andy,  the  man  whose  head  was  in  the  correspondent's 
lap  had  given  a  little  shiver  and  died. 

A  very  white  Andy  walked  back  to  the  car. 

"You've  got  blood  all  over  you!"  said  McGregor.  He  was 
as  white  as  Andy. 

"What  sort  of  show  is  this?"  asked  Andy.  "The  town 
looks  as  if  it  were  shelled  every  little  while,  but  they  haven't 
any  stretchers  ready.  Look  at  the  men  coming  out  to  see 
what's  happened,  and  that  officer  hasn't  the  sense  to  order 
them  into  the  cellars." 

"Why?"  McGregor  half  rose.  "Do  you  think  there'll  be 
another?" 

McGregor  dismounted  from  the  car.  He  held  his  steamer- 
rug  by  one  end,  but  let  the  other  trail  in  the  mud. 

"Here,"  he  said,  "you  take  these  passes  and  go  ahead  if 
you  want  to,  but  I  advise  you  not  to.  I'm  going  in  here  to 
talk  to  the  general.  I  want  to  see  him  anyway." 

in 

The  car,  now  holding  only  Andy  and  the  chauffeur,  ran 
madly  along  more  muddy  roads,  the  brown  water  flying  out 
in  spreading  rays  behind  them.  They  came  to  a  slight  emi 
nence. 

The  gray  light  revealed  below  a  vast  semicircle  of  drab 


100  VICTOKIOUS 

open  country.  In  each  of  three  directions  nothing  broke  the 
monotony,  save  here  and  there  a  group  of  trees  that  seemed 
to  have  been  ripped  by  lightning,  a  wall  of  shattered  stone 
like  the  ruin  of  some  castle  worn  away  by  time.  The  only 
thing  at  once  remarkable  about  the  landscape  was  its  barren 
ness;  it  might  have  been  a  slice  of  the  Dakota  Bad  Lands; 
but  Andy  knew  that,  three  years  ago,  this  was  all  dotted 
with  farms;  those  ragged  trees  were  a  forest  then;  that  sin 
gle  chimney  marked  the  place  where  a  village  stood. 

The  chauffeur  pointed  to  some  zigzag  yellow  lines  that 
resembled  clay  thrown  up  by  the  burrowings  of  many  moles. 

"Those,"  said  he,  "are  our  trenches." 

Down  there,  under  the  ground,  were  men  at  war;  down 
there,  in  a  gigantic  rabbit-warren,  men  waited  but  the  sign 
of  command  to  spring  out  and  deal  death — and  receive  it. 
As  yet,  to  Andy's  unaccustomed  eyes,  there  was  not  anywhere 
a  token  of  life,  but  all  the  while  that  landscape  teemed  with 
the  life  that  kills. 

Out  of  nowhere  something  rolled  into  Andy's  vision  of 
the  sky — a  huge  floating  sausage.  Another  and  another  fol 
lowed.  Broken  nets,  on  which  fluttered  bits  of  green  rags, 
lined  the  roadway,  suspended  between  saplings.  The}  came 
to  an  unprotected  stretch  of  road  at  the  entrance  to  which 
was  a  sign: 


ATTENTION! 

L'Ennemi  Vous  Voit! 


Farther  on,  under  a  canopy  of  intertwined  twigs,  was  a 
battery  perfectly  aligned,  its  day's  ammunition  tidily  piled 
close  by.  The  car  passed  a  dreary  line  of  walking-wounded 
hobbling  to  the  rear.  Occasional  shells  splashed  earth  and 
fire  and  iron  around  them. 


VICTORIOUS  101 

When  the  next  elevation  was  gained,  Andy  could  see  the 
Germans'  ridge  more  clearly  than  before.  He  pointed  to 
sparks  that  flashed  there. 

"Heliographing  ?"  he  wondered. 

"German  artillery,"  corrected  his  companion. 

There  was  a  whining  and  rushing  in  the  vibrating  air  like 
the  cry  of  tigers  and  the  flight  of  antediluvian  bird  s-of -prey. 
With  Andy's  ear  close  to  his  mouth,  the  chauffeur  roared 
gossip  of  the  front,  but,  though  his  ear  was  for  the  speaker, 
Andy's  eyes  were  bent  toward  the  battle-field.  That  was  No 
Man's  Land  down  there.  In  front  of  twenty  miles  of  already 
thrice-filled  cemetery,  there  lay  an  open-air  slaughter-house 
twenty  miles  long.  Overhead,  an  observation-balloon,  tug 
ging  querulously  at  its  rope,  must  have  borne  an  observer, 
who,  glasses  at  eyes,  telephoned  his  reports  to  some  artillery 
officer  behind  the  ridge.  Toward  the  close  horizon  there  were 
those  sparkles  which  marked  the  firing  Boche  guns.  Andy 
could  scarcely  believe  that,  ahead  of  him  in  the  German  lines 
and  nearer  yet  to  him  in  the  American  positions,  artillerymen 
were  sweating  over  blistering  guns  whose  huge  projectiles 
were  these,  crisscrossing  in  the  sky. 

The  automobile  came  to  the  remnants  of  a  village,  scarce 
a  house  of  which  now  rose  higher  than  a  single  story.  It 
was  quieter  here.  The  chauffeur  pointed  to  an  old  barn. 

"We'll  get  out,"  said  he.  •  "An  American  communication- 
trench  runs  out  o'  the  back  door  of  that  barn.  It's  a  hell  of  a 
mess — the  whole  business." 

He  said  that  the  French  had  been  justified  in  choosing  as 
their  headquarters  the  chateau  that  McGregor  had  entered, 
because  of  the  tacit  understanding  which  reduced  bombard 
ments  to  a  minimum  during  the  French  occupation  of  this 
sector,  but  he  scoffed  at  our  folly  in  using  the  same  head 
quarters.  The  Germans  were  on  a  hill  overlooking  it,  yet 
we  had  not  constructed  a  dug-out  or  piled  two  sandbags 
together. 

"It's  an  easy  mark  and  a  peach  of  a  gas-trap,"  said  the 
chauffeur.  "There  are  a  lot  of  casualties,  too,  and  it's  all  our 
own  fault  for  not  taking  decent  care." 


102  VICTORIOUS 

As  he  piloted  Andy  through  the  barn,  he  went  on  explain 
ing: 

"The  Algerians  used  to  hold  these  trenches,  but  all  we've 
done  in  the  way  of  sanitation's  to  sprinkle  around  a  little 
chloride  of  lime.  And  there  are  eight  lines  of  wire  there  for 
communication  with  headquarters,  and  we've  left  'em  all  un 
covered  :  one  lucky  shell'd  ruin  the  lot.  What  do  you  know 
about  that?" 

iy 

Andy  saw  that  he  was  crouching  in  a  long  pit  that  ended 
in  sharp  turns,  one  to  the  right,  the  other  to  the  left.  The 
pit  was  so  narrow  that  he  could  not  stretch  his  arms  to  their 
full  length;  it  was  higher  than  his  head  and  rose  for  a  few 
feet  above  the  surface  of  the  earth  in  a  hodge-podge  pile  of 
sandbags  and  tin  cans.  Rotting  revetments  supported  the 
oozing  sides,  and  there  was  a  step  along  the  forward  side  on 
which  a  man  might  stand  to  shoot.  Some  broken  boards  ran 
down  the  bottom ;  they  splashed  up  sprays  of  noisome  liquid 
if  the  occupant  trod  on  them ;  if  he  did  not  tread  on  them,  he 
sank  ankle-deep  in  abominations. 

Two  shivering  American  soldiers  were  in  sight.  Both  men 
were  so  caked  with  mud  that  it  was  difficult  to  tell  where 
their  blouses  ended  and  their  throats  began.  One  of  these 
soldiers  leaned  from  the  firing-step  and  peered  through  a 
bottomless  tin  can  placed  in  the  rampart  to  give  a  view  of 
the  land  between  the  opposing  lines — Andy  noted  that  this 
man's  boots  were  broken  and  that  his  toes  protruded — the 
otker  squatted  in  the  ooze  and,  having  tossed  his  boots  away, 
nursed  his  swollen  feet,  on  which  only  the  rags  of  stockings 
remained. 

"You  look  cold,"  Andy  yelled  against  the  roaring  guns. 

The  man  on  the  step  did  not  remove  his  eyes  from  their 
duty ;  the  man  in  the  muck  looked  up  with  eyes  that  were  like 
holes  burnt  in  a  blanket. 

"Cold?"  he  repeated. 

His  overcoat  had  lost  a  button.  Through  the  opening, 
Andv  could  see  the  blouse  of  a  summer  uniform. 


VICTOBIOUS  103 

"Do  they  make  you  wear  those  cotton  things  ?"  called  Andy. 

"There  ain't  no  others  come  over  yet." 

The  horror  of  the  place,  and  of  the  plight  of  the  men  in 
it,  bit  into  Andy's  soul.  He  saw  the  filth  in  which  he  per 
force  wallowed ;  his  nostrils,  even  while  thick  with  the  effluvia 
from  explosives,  could  not  bar  the  stench;  he  received  the 
evidence  that  here,  where  there  could  be  no  decency  or  reserve 
not  daily  violated,  all  those  delicacies  which  every  man  pos 
sesses,  and  tries  to  pretend  he  lacks,  rose  in  sickened  revolt. 

"I  bet  you'll  be  glad  when  the  relief  comes/'  he  said. 

He  did  not  shout  this ;  but  the  man  in  the  muck  must  have 
read  his  lips,  as  men  learn  soon  to  read  lips  in  modern  battle. 
That  man  leaped  to  his  frost-bitten  feet.  Through  his  mask 
of  dirt,  his  face  burned. 

"Don't  you  run  away  with  any  idea  like  that!"  he  thun 
dered.  "We  came  here  to  fight,  an'  there's  not  a  fellow  but 
what  wants  to  stick  till  he  gets  a  go  at  it!" 

The  other  man  twitched  Andy's  sleeve. 

"Want  to  take  a  look?"  he  inquired. 


On  the  way  back,  they  passed  a  little  group  of  prisoners, 
captured  while  venturing  too  far  on  a  reconnaissance  the 
night  before.  They  had  been  for  almost  a  month  in  the 
trenches  and  for  three  days  of  that  time  cut  off,  by  American 
fire,  from  all  food  and  supplies.  They  were  more  like  the 
beasts  of  the  mountain-caves  than  men. 

At  a  first-aid  station — one  of  the  rough-and-ready  dressing- 
stations  nearest  the  firing-line  —  wounded  Americans  were 
feeding  these  captives  cigarettes;  when  the  captive  had  been 
shot  in  the  hands,  the  American  even  placed  the  cigarette 
between  the  Teutonic  lips  and  applied  a  match  to  it. 

These  Americans  were  formed  voluntarily  in  a  long  line 
before  the  first-aid  station ;  there  was  no  distinction  of  rank ; 
the  rule  was  first  come,  first  served. 

One  there  was  who  seemed  to  Andy  especially  in  need  of 


104  VICTORIOUS 

attention.  He  swayed  from  dizziness,  and  blood  dripped  from 
the  bandaged  bulk  of  his  left  hand. 

Andy  looked  about  for  help.   He  said  to  the  wounded  man : 
"Come  out  of  line,  and  I'll  get  you  attended  to." 
"I'll  wait  my  turn,  thank  you,"  the  wounded  man  re 
sponded. 

He  was  a  colonel,  and  there  were  only  enlisted  men  ahead 
of  him. 

VI 

"Well,"  said  Andy,  as  he  rejoined  the  chauffeur,  "I've  seen 
a  battle,  anyhow."' 

"Battle?"  gaped  the  chauffeur.  "What  you  talkin'  about 
— battle  ?  This  has  been  what  they  call  a  'quiet  day :  nothin' 
to  report.'  If  it  hadn't  been  goin'  to  be,  d'you  suppose 
they'd've  left  visitors  out  here?" 

A  roar  of  artillery  interrupted  him. 

So  the  day  that  had  begun  with  death  and  the  pounding 
of  guns  ended  with  the  pounding  of  guns  and  death.  To 
morrow  would  so  begin  and  so  end.  And  another  to-morrow 
and  another. 

VII 

Yet  Andy  felt  there  was  something  wrong.  The  immensity 
of  our  projects  had  dazzled  him  a  few  months  ago.  Now, 
though  his  faith  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  American  demo 
cratic  effort  was  not  lessened,  he  felt  that  there  were  at  work, 
somewhere  in  democratic  America,  forces  that  would  exploit 
patriotism  for  the  increase  of  their  own  power. 

VIII 

In  Paris,  precisely  at  seven  P.  M.,  at  the  corner  of  the  rue 
des  Petits  Champs  and  the  Avenue  de  1' Opera,  Sylvia,  with 
outstretched  hand  and  Tac  at  her  heels,  came  into  the  light 
that  fell  from  a  shop- window.  She  reminded  Andy  of  a  gray- 
eyed  child  just  released  from  school. 


VICTORIOUS  105 

"You're  back,"  she  said :  "I'm  glad." 

She  wore  a  short  skirt.  About  her  slim  neck  fur  nestled, 
and,  between  its  darkness  and  that  of  her  fur  turban,  golden 
tendrils  clustered  about  her  face. 

"So  am  I/'  said  blushing  Andy.  Tac  sniffed  at  him, 
wagged  a  low  but  increasingly  certain  tail,  received  the  hearty 
pat  of  recognition.  "But  I  hear  you're  going  away.77 

"Just  for  a  little  while.7'  She  fell  into  springing  step  be 
side  him.  "That  doesn7t  matter.  The  important  thing  is: 
how  did  you  make  out?7' 

"Fd  rather  know  how  you're  making  out,'7  Andy  vowed. 

"Oh,  well  enough.  I7m  going  to  be  afraid  of  my  audiences : 
they  will  be  such  a  new  kind.  The  sketch  is  silly;  I  don't 
want  you  to  see  it.  But  I7m  doing  well  enough.  Now  tell  me 
about  yourself.77 

"We're  going  to  Foyot7s.    Shall  I  get  a  taxi  ?7' 

"You  couldn7t  get  a  taxi  at  this  hour ;  and  you  know  I  love 
to  walk.  Now77 — she  shook  her  gloved  hands  in  laughing 
suspense — "do  please  tell  me  about  your  trip.77 

He  was  full  of  it,  of  course,  but  the  chronicle  was  inter 
rupted  by  frequent  twists  and  turns  through  the  home-going 
crowd,  and  in  front  of  the  Theatre  Frangais  they  brushed 
against  McGregor's  servant,  returning  to  his  masters  limou 
sine  from  the  box-office.  Comfortably  muffled  McGregor 
leaned  forward  the  least  bit  in  the  world  and  in  his  high 
voice,  called  to  Andy. 

"I  motored  up,77  he  said.  "I  wish  you7d  waited  for  me.  It7s 
more  com — 77  Then  he  saw  that  Sylvia  was  with  the  young 
correspondent:  he  unswathed  himself  and,  bowing,  stepped 
with  a  wheeze  to  the  curb. 

Andy  presented  him. 

"You7re  an  American  girl?7'  asked  McGregor. 

Sylvia  straightway  confirmed  the  impression. 

"I  tell  you  what/7  chuckled  the  contractor:  "'our  girls  are 
going  to  do  as  much  fighting  in  this  war  as  our  boys  are. 
Nursing,  Miss  Raeburn  ?'7 

"I  wish  I  could/7  she  said,  "but  I7m  so  useless.77 

"She's  not  useless/'  Andy  declared:  "she's  given  up  a  big 


106  VICTORIOUS 

engagement  in  New  York  to  come  over  here.  She's  an 
actress." 

Above  their  darkened  pouches,  McGregor's  hazel  eyes 
brightened. 

"An  actress  ?"  He  asked  her  a  half-dozen  quick  questions. 
He  rattled  off  the  names  of  many  players,  inquiring  whether 
she  knew  their  owners,  but  was  not  disconcerted  when  most  of 
her  replies  were  negative.  "Well,  I'm  afraid  my  theatrical 
acquaintance  isn't  the  best,  Miss  Raeburn." 

"And  are  you  here  on  war-work  ?"  wondered  Sylvia. 

"I  should  say  I  am,"  McGregor  replied.  "She'd  have 
thought  so  if  she'd  seen  us  two  in  the  trenches,  wouldn't  she, 
Brown?" 

Andy  looked  at  him  quickly,  but  McGregor  did  not  give  the 
expected  wink:  it  seemed  that  he  considered  the  word 
"trenches"  as  synonymous  with  "front." 

McGregor  made  light  of  the  favor,  but  much  of  the  peril. 
Then  Sylvia  asked : 

"May  you  tell  what  sort  of  war-work  yours  is  ?" 

He  had  rather  avoided  the  subject,  but,  now  that  she  re 
turned  to  it,  appeared  to  meet  it  fairly  enough : 

"I  sell  aeroplanes.    At  a  loss." 

"Where's  Tac?"  inquired  Andy,  almost  glad  suddenly  to 
miss  the  dog,  because  he  somehow  felt  that  they  trod  delicate 
ground. 

Tac  was  no  pet  for  a  leash ;  up  the  avenue,  he  had  been  fol 
lowing  them  through  the  crowd  with  his  nose  not  half  an  inch 
behind  Sylvia's  glinting  heels.  Now  their  sudden  turn  to  the 
curb  must  have  separated  him  from  them. 

"Tac?"  echoed  McGregor.  "A  friend  of  yours,  Miss  Eae- 
burn?" 

"Yes,"  she  said ;  "a  dog.  But  he  won't  be  lost :  he  has  the 
most  wonderful  scent  in  the  world."  Nevertheless,  she  looked 
about  her  with  some  anxiety. 

Andy  plunged  into  the  throng  of  passers-by. 

McGregor's  eyes  first  followed  Andy,  then,  and  steadily, 
returned  to  Sylvia. 


VICTOBIOUS  107 

"That's  a  nice  boy,"  he  said. 

Sylvia  assented.    "He's  been  awfully  nice  to  me." 

"But  he's  impulsive/'  McGregor  pursued. 

"I  like  impulsiveness,  Mr.  McGregor — when  it's  in  the  right 
direction." 

"Yes,  it's  all  right;  but  it's  liable  to  be  dangerous  in  war 
time — in  wartime  and  among  strangers." 

Her  brows  puckered.  "I  don't  think  Mr.  Brown  is  afraid 
of  danger." 

"He's  too  much  the  other  way,  Miss  Eaeburn.  He  don't 
look  where  he's  going :  he  just  starts  out.  That's  what  I  think, 
but  maybe  I  don't  know  him  well  enough.  Have  you  known 
him  long?" 

"Only  since  I  came  to  Paris."  Her  grave  eyes  did  not  flinch. 
"He's  a  friend  of  a  man  I  know  at  home."  The  pucker  had 
been  deepening,  but  it  went  no  farther:  Tac  came  bounding 
out  of  the  crowd,  scattering  people  to  right  and  left.  "Mon 
vieux  loup!"  she  cried:  "Vous  etes  tres  intelligent!" 

McGregor  looked  on.  "He's  got  good  points.  He  ought  to 
be  the  very  guard  for  a  lady  over  here." 

"I  don't  need  a  guard,  and  he  doesn't  speak  a  word  of  Eng 
lish,"  said  Sylvia,  glancing  up  with  a  face  from  which  all  in 
dications  of  embarrassment  had  disappeared,  "and  my  French 
accent  is  almost  too  much  for  him ;  but  if  I  tell  him  to" — she 
lowered  her  always  low  voice — "to  attack" — the  dog  tilted  his 
head  toward  her — "You  see,  I  have  to  be  careful  how  I  say 
it  even  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence :  if  I  tell  him  to  do  that, 
he'll  fly  at  anybody  I  point  to." 

"Will  he?"  asked  McGregor.  "How  do  you  say  it  in 
French?" 

"Why,  of  course,  the  word  sounds  the  same  in  French  as  in 
English,"  said  Sylvia. 

McGregor's  servant  was  tinkering  with  the  front  of  the  car 
as  no  car-lover  ever  loses  a  chance  to  tinker.  The  contractor 
said  "Look  out,  George,"  to  him,  then  touched  the  dog,  and 
called  "Attack !" 

'There  was  a  brown  flash  through  the  air,  and  George  was 


108  VICTORIOUS 

seen  falling  backward  with  the  dog  in  his  arms.  Tac  had 
leaped  across  the  car's  nose  and,  fixing  his  teeth  in  the  serv 
ant's  collar,  thrown  him. 

"Good  God !"  said  McGregor.    "Call  him  off." 

But  Sylvia  had  already  done  that. 

"Halte!  HoUte,  la  I"  she  had  cried,  and  Tac  had  instantly 
stopped  with  one  spread  paw  upon  the  servant's  throat. 
"Viens  id!"  she  supplemented,  and  Tac  came  back  to  her, 
licking  his  chops. 

It  took  some  time — until  Andy's  return,  in  fact — for  Sylvia 
to  assure  herself  that  the  servant  was  not  hurt  and  for  Mc 
Gregor  to  explain  to  everybody,  including  a  little  mob  of  per 
sons  innocent  of  English  which  immediately  gathered,  that  he 
had  had  no  idea  how  literally  Tac  would  obey  orders.  They 
were  rather  relieved  to  separate. 

Through  the  opened  door  of  the  restaurant,  down  the  steps 
and  across  the  red  room  with  its  comfortable  compartments, 
Maurice,  the  head-waiter,  first,  and  then  Sylvia  and  Andy, 
Tac  closely  following,  they  passed,  and  as  they  went,  the  ro- 
setted  senators  of  France  and  the  American  majors  stopped 
their  eating  and  drinking  to  look  at  her.  Andy  noted  it  and 
triumphed:  the  cessation  of  talk,  the  noise  of  cutlery,  sud 
denly  died  down — there  were  involuntary  tributes  to  the  girl 
at  his  side. 

Theirs  was  a  corner  compartment.  Tac  curled,  at  a  word 
from  his  mistress,  at  her  feet,  and  was  no  more  seen.  Sylvia 
took  the  cushioned  bench,  and  Andy,  his  back  to  the  room,  sat 
in  the  chair  opposite  and  looked  at  her,  over  the  table.  He 
wanted  to  sit  beside  her,  but  did  not  dare. 

"Let's  begin  all  over  again" — she  cupped  her  chin  in  her 
hands  and  gave  him  the  wonder  of  her  blue-gray  eyes.  "I 
want  to  hear  all  you  did  down  there." 

Though  with  the  genial  assistance  of  smiling  Maurice,  he 
ordered  that  dinner,  what  they  ate  Andy  could  never  after 
ward  remember.  He  was  carried  too  far  away  by  the  sight 
of  her  sensitive  face  respondent  to  his  story,  by  her  eyes  that 
became  all  shades,  and  tints  behind  tints,  as  she  listened;  by 
her  intimate  sympathy  and  the  sound  of  her  voice  in  wise 


VICTOEIOUS  109 

council.  He  knew  but  that  he  told  her  everything  and  that 
she — and  there  was  an  added  glory — approved  all  that  he  had 
done. 

"Only,"  she  said,  "you  mustn't  be  too  discouraged." 

As  if  he  could  be  that  while  she  was  there  to  encourage  him ! 

"I  mean,"  she  explained,  "you  mustn't  think  the  cause  is 
wrong  just  because  it's  mismanaged,  or  that  the  army  isn't 
a  good  one  just  because  a  few  of  the  officers  in  it  are  trying  to 
cover  up  the  politicians'  mistakes." 

"Of  course  I  won't,"  Andy  asseverated.  "Why,  you  ought  to 
see  those  enlisted  men ! — you  will  be  seeing  them  soon.  Most 
of  the  officers  are  all  right,  too:  but  you  just  can't  look  at 
those  enlisted  men  and  not  believe  in — in  America  and  the 
flag  and — and  in  just  everything." 

"And  that,"  said  Sylvia,  "is  what  makes  it  all  the  worse  for 
anybody  to  cheat  them.  I  know." 

"I  know  you  know,"  said  Andy. 

She  gave  him  added  strength ;  he  told  her  so. 

"I  wish  I  could,"  she  answered.  "I  wish  I  had  the  chance 
that  you  have.  Oh,  you  men  don't  know  how  hard  it  is  to  be 
a  woman  when  there  is  a  war !" 

The  flowerlike  mouth  was  parted,  the  swiftly  intaken  breath 
made  a  little  hissing  sound  as  it  passed  over  her  small  white 
teeth.  Her  eyes  were  at  once  flashing  stars  and  bottomless 
pools.  If  there  had  been  moments,  since  he  first  met  her, 
when  she  seemed  a  child,  she  was  now  another  Maid  of  Or 
leans  to  him. 

IX 

They  walked  slowly  down  the  rue  de  Seine  and  so  along 
the  river  and  past  the  outline  of  the  Invalides  toward  the 
Pont  de  1'Alma.  There  were  no  artificial  lights  save,  now  and 
again,  an  electric  street-lamp,  hazy  behind  a  globe  of  blue, 
but  a  clean  moonshine  painted  the  old  thoroughfare  with 
silver.  The  cool  crisp  sky  was  a  sky  of  stars;  Scorpio  was 
still  master  of  the  heavens,  and,  with  Cassiopeia  almost  di 
rectly  overhead,  they  could  look  across  the  water  and  see  the 


110  VICTOEIOUS 

dragon  pursuing  Ursa  Minor  toward  the  retreating  wheels  of 
the  Charioteer. 

"I  don't  know  one  of  them  by  name/'  said  Andy,  a  sweep 
of  Ms  right  arm  indicating  every  visible  luminary — "and  of 
course  you  know  them  all." 

She  had  not  resumed  her  gloves.  Her  white  hand — that 
hand  which  he  had  longed  to  kiss — was  on  his  arm.  He  felt 
it  tremble  there  as  a  bird  on  a  bough  trembling  in  the  cold. 

"I'm  not  at  all  a  wise  woman,  you  know/'  she  said. 

He  was  trying  to  remember  something  from  The  Merchant 
of  Venice,  which  he  had  been  forced  to  read  in  the  Americus 
high-school.  Something  about 

"in  such  a  night 
Troilus  methinks  mounted  the  Trojan  walls," 

and  about  Troilus,  whoever  he  was,  sighing  "his  soul  out 
toward  the  Grecian  tents"  where  his  sweetheart  slept:  it  had 
been  very  dull  reading  then,  but  he  wished  he  could  recall  it 
now.  However,  he  knew  that,  if  he  could  recall  it,  he  would 
lack  the  courage  to  repeat  it,  and  so  he  took  up  her  own 
words,  which  were,  after  all,  poetry  enough  for  him : 

"You  are  a  wise  woman.  You've  just  been  proving  it.  You 
kind  of  see  through — I  guess,  it's  over:  yes,  over — all  the  mean 
little  things  that  get  in  between  me  and  the  big  things  and 
hide  them  from  me." 

"If  I  only  deserved  that !"  said  Sylvia, 

Prom  behind  closed  shutters  in  a  window  of  one  of  the 
houses  blindly  facing  the  river,  there  came  the  low  notes  of  a 
piano  meditatively  played. 

On  a  common  impulse,  they  paused  to  listen.  Perhaps  be 
cause  of  some  connotation  born  of  that  phrase  about  the  Gre 
cian  tents,  the  music  made  Andy  think  of  a  grove  in  a  vast 
valley,  with  sunlight  filtering  through  the  green  of  ancient 
trees  and,  far  off,  the  flash  of  a  nymphic  body  vanishing  to 
the  reed-pipes  of  an  unseen  god. 

"What  is  it?"  he  whispered. 


VICTORIOUS  111 

Her  answer  was  almost  as  much  a  whisper :  "It's  Gounod's 
Au  Printemps.  I  used  to  play  it  years  ago  at  boarding-school 
in  Virginia." 

She  was  not  Joan  of  Arc  to  him  now;  soon — in  another 
moment,  perhaps — she  would  be;  but  just  now  she  was  that 
careless  nymph,  vanishing  among  the  trees,  glad  and  im 
mortal.  "I'll  never  hear  it  without  thinking  of  you,"  he  said. 

There  was  a  slight  pressure  of  his  arm,  where  her  hand 
lay.  "We  must  go  on." 

They  moved  forward  with  reluctant  feet.  Behind  them  the 
reedy  calls  of  the  pipes  of  Pan  grew  fainter  and  fainter  until 
lost  in  the  grove  that  never  was. 

She  firmly  brought  the  talk  back  to  practical  matters,  ad 
vised  him,  assiduously  fanned  the  fires  of  his  militant  pa 
triotism,  held  intently  before  him  his  old  ideal.  In  the  clear 
moonlight,  he  could  see  the  soft  flush  of  her  cheeks,  the  even 
brows,  the  sweet  mouth  and  the  eyes  of  steady  faith.  He  must 
return  to  the  camp  and  there  either  verify  or  dissipate  his 
fears  of  mismanagement.  A  few  paces  back,  he  had  wondered 
how  much  longer  he  could  resist  asking  the  impossible ;  again 
the  violet  ray  in  his  spectrum,  here  she  was  the  saint  offering 
him  a  sword. 

"Your  tour  isn't  to  anywhere  but  the  camp?"  he  asked  her. 

No,  she  said,  it  wasn't;  and  Andy  breathed  relief.  He  had 
had,  fleetingly,  a  red  picture  of  her  somewhere  near  the  front. 
He  wondered,  when  they  reached  the  hotel,  whether  some 
such  danger  would  overtake  him  there — whether  he  should 
ever  see  her  again. 

"When  do  you  go?" 

"To-morrow." 

He  had  guessed  as  much.  He  almost  guessed  why  she  had 
not  told  him  sooner. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "just  when  I'll  be  off  again." 

Her  eyes  were  full  upon  him :  "You  were  telling  me,"  she 
said,  "that  you  didn't  count — that  you  were  only  one.  You 
do  count.  Don't  forget  that."  The  notes  of  her  voice  were  the 
wood-notes  of  the  stopped  diapason's  bourdon.  "Perhaps  you 


112  VICTOEIOUS 

can  get  the  word  to  these  boys'  fathers  and  mothers  that  will 
make  the  politicians  give  the  boys  a — a  square  deal." 

He  took  her  hand. 

"I  know/'  he  said. 

"Try  I" 

It  was  as  if  she  handed  him  the  sword. 


CHAPTEE  VII 

CONCERNS  SOME  EXPERIENCES,  PSYCHOLOGICAL  AS  WELL  AS 
PHYSICAL,  OF  A  CONSCIENTIOUS  OBJECTOR;  AND  TELLS  A 
GOOD  DEAL  ABOUT  DEMOCRACY  IN  THE  DOLDRUMS 

The  Amish  are  a  peaceable  and  thrifty  farmer-folk,  a  pe 
culiar  sect,  the  descendants  of  Palatines  attracted  to  the 
limestone  plain  of  the  Great  Valley  by  the  prospectuses  of 
that  best  advertiser  of  the  seventeenth  century,  William  Penn, 
since  whose  time  they  have  "kept  themselves  to  themselves," 
intermarried,  remained  where  the  Quakers  put  them,  and, 
thanks  to  their  industry  and  the  most  fruitful  soil  in  Amer 
ica,  grown  rich.  They  wear  homespun  clothes  held  together 
by  hooks  and  eyes,  because  they  consider  that  "buttons  is  a 
wanity" ;  they  hire  few  servants,  but  help  one  another  in  till 
ing  and  harvesting ;  they  will  not  go  to  law ;  they  regard  the 
census  with  suspicion,  and  many  of  them  refuse  to  vote.  A 
cardinal  principle  of  their  religion  holds  that  war  is  murder. 

In  that  principle  Chrissly  had  been  reared.  When  the  local 
draft-board  seized  him  on  the  ground  that  he  had  not  been 
formally  received  into  the  faith  of  his  fathers,  his  parents 
permitted  him  to  go  without  a  struggle  because  of  the  Pauline 
injunction  of  submission  to  constituted  authority ;  but  he  was 
sent  away  from  home  with  advice  that  warned  him  against  the 
evil  of  willing  participation  in  conflict,  and  he  hated  the 
thought  of  battle  as  sturdily  as  his  father  and  mother  had 
taught  him  to  hate  all  other  forms  of  sin. 

The  cantonment-life  in  America  did  not  serve  to  lessen 
this  aversion;  his  homesickness,  which  increased  with  his  ar 
rival  in  France,  served  only  to  intensify  it.  Then  Chrissly 
had  his  interview  with  the  German  prisoners.  Next  he  met 
Leonie  and  heard  her  story.  At  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  huts,  he 

113 


114  VICTORIOUS 

listened  to  lectures  on  the  causes  and  progress  of  the  war, 
and,  in  order  to  improve  his  English,  which  was  already  alter 
ing  through  daily  contact  with  men  from  various  sections  of 
the  United  States,  he  began  to  read  the  Bible  for  himself: 
he  began,  systematically,  with  Genesis  and  paid  special  at 
tention  to  Joshua  and  the  more  belligerent  of  the  Psalms. 
He  often  turned  back  to  the  words  of  Nehemiah :  "Eemem- 
ber  the  Lord,  which  is  great  and  terrible,  and  fight  for  your 
brethren,  your  sons,  and  your  daughters,  your  wives,  and 
your  houses";  and  he  was  impressed  by  the  message  brought 
from  Jehovah  by  Jeremiah  to  Zedekiah :  "I  myself  will  fight 
against  you  with  an  outstretched  hand  and  with  a  strong  arm, 
even  in  anger  and  fury  and  in  just  wrath/3  Then  came  a  day 
when  he  used  to  imagine  the  Song  of  Deborah  issuing  from 
the  lips  of  Leonie. 

Chrissly  decided  that  this  war  was  not  murder,  but  execu 
tion:  the  killing  of  mad  dogs.  His  neighbors  at  home  were 
right  in  most  things,  but  concerning  the  present  business  un- 
instructed.  If  he  did  not  attempt  to  teach  them,  that  was 
because,  in  his  letters,  he  avoided  points  of  controversy. 

In  such  a  mind  he  was  when  there  had  come  the  rumor 
that  his  unit  would  soon  complete  its  training  by  a  course 
of  lessons  under  fire. 

Chrissly  was  not  soon  to  forget  those  last  few  days  in  camp. 
He  had  grown  nearer  to  Leonie :  whereas  he  spoke  an  English 
more  or  less  peculiar,  his  French  came  without  a  trace  of 
accent  and  with  increasing  fluency,  and  in  his  teacher  he 
found  a  subject  that  possessed  his  thoughts.  About  his  des 
tination  his  unit  had,  when  the  rumor  came  that  they  were 
to  march,  no  delusions.  He  sought  out  Le"onie  in  the  inn-yard 
and  there  told  her. 

There  had  been  times  when,  through  the  dignity  bequeathed 
her  by  her  past  sufferings,  the  light  of  earlier  and  happier 
days  would  peep  and  when  childhood  returned  on  her  lips  to 
mock  precocious  maturity;  but  now  she  heard  him  with  a 
face  like  that  of  some  statue  hewn  to  symbolize  the  brave 
agony  of  France.  Her  lips  were  compressed,  her  large  eyes 
were  neither  black  nor  brown,  but  like  a  mirror  reflecting 


VICTOEIOUS  115 

far-off  events  that  he  might  not  understand  and  that  she 
would  not  explain. 

"Ad — au  revoir"  she  said. 

"II  vous  faut  dire  a  bientot,  mon  amie"  said  Chrissly,  quite 
as  if  he  were  speaking  his  native  tongue. 

"J'espere  que  oui"  said  Leonie. 

He  would  have  answered  that,  but  a  perverse  image  of 
Minnie  Taylor  flashed  into  his  head,  and  he  left  the  inn-yard 
awkwardly. 

II 

Chrissly's  battalion  slopped  and  slid  on  and  on.  Some  of 
the  men  were  singing: 

"Good-by,  Ma !  Good-ky,  Pa! 
Good-by,  Mule,  with  yer  old  hee-haw ! 
I  may  not  know  what  th?  war's  about, 
But  you  bet,  by  gosh,  I'll  soon  find  out ! 
An'  0  my  sweetheart,  don't  you  fear, 
I'll  bring  you  a  King  fer  a  sou-ve-nir ; 
'  I'll  git  you  a  Turk  an'  a  Kai-ser,  too, 
An'  that's  about  all  one  feller  can  do." 

They  swore  at  the  weather,  at  their  bad  boots,  at  the  muddy 
roads ;  but  more  often  they  joked.  Nothing  was  sacred  against 
their  humor.  They  joked  because  they  knew  that  they  were 
going,  and  because  they  wanted  to  go,  where  death  was. 

"I  wisht  we  could  hear  cannons  or  somesing,"  said  Chrissly. 

The  twilight  deepened. 

They  passed  a  roofless  building  that  must  have  been  a  hos 
pital.  Into  it  men  were  staggering  with  a  stretcher  on  which 
lay  a  figure  with  its  head  so  swathed  in  bandages  that  Chrissly 
thought  it  had  no  head  at  all.  Chrissly  saw  a  faint  move 
ment  of  its  chest  where  the  tunic  had  been  torn  open. 

There  was  a  scream — the  scream  as  of  a  gigantic  hound 
that  had  been  wounded.  It  came  from  overhead.  An  explo 
sion  followed,  and,  in  a  field  some  hundred  yards  away,  tons 
of  earth  leaped  heavenward. 


116  VICTOK10US 

"There's  your  cannon,  all  right,"  said  a  man  at  Chrissly's 
side. 

The  descending  earth  pattered  about  them  like  hail.  It  was 
nearly  night.  A  barn  loomed  ahead  of  them. 

Every  little  while  there  was  a  noise  like  the  snapping  of 
whips.  Chrissly  wondered  what  it  meant. 

"Who-o-o-o-i-s-s-s-h  \" 

Metallic  reverberations  shook  the  barn.  Men  glued  them 
selves  against  the  wall.  The  air  became  heavy  with  odors 
sulphurous  and  suffocating. 

"It's  only  Fritz's  evening  prayer/'  said  the  soldier  next  to 
Chrissly.  "It  won't  last  long.  .  .  ." 

A  dark  form  came  along  and  pushed  Chrissly  and  his  com 
panion  against  the  clammy  farther  wall  of  a  communication 
trench. 

"Stop  there — and  don't  stick  your  head  up,"  said  the  dark 
form  as  it  disappeared. 

An  acrid  smell,  indescribably  nauseating,  hung  heavily  on 
the  still  air. 

There  came  a  blare  of  light  ahead  of  them,  and  both  men 
disobeyed  the  order  they  had  just  received.  A  star-shell  had 
burst  and  was  exposing  to  them  a  circle  in  No  Man's  Land. 

Chrissly  saw,  bathed  in  white  light,  the  top  of  a  great  ash- 
heap  ;  torn  earth,  barbed  wire,  broken  wheels,  rusting  and  rot 
ting  accouterments.  Figures,  too  —  the  grotesque  figures  of 
motionless  men,  fantastically  contorted:  Chrissly  wondered 
if  they  had  been  thrown  there  from  aeroplanes.  Clenched  fists; 
stiff  upraised  arms ;  legs  bent  in  the  wrong  direction.  A  face 
grinned  at  Chrissly  horribly,  as  if  with  spectral  recognition. 
All  this  in  the  flash  of  a  moment. 

Darkness  followed.  It  was  hideous  now  because  of  what  it 
concealed. 

"There'll  be  flies  to-morrow,"  said  a  veteran  near  Chrissly. 
"So  thick  you  can't  brush  'em  off.  Sticky.  They  breed  out 
there.  Up  near  Wytschaette,  I  tried  to  brush  the  flies  off  a 
stiff :  when  I  touched  his  nose,  it  came  off  in  my  hand."  He 
spat  into  the  trench.  "Gee,  but  they  stink,"  he  said.  "One 
time—" 


VICTOEIOUS 

He  was  interrupted  by  a  rattle  of  bullets.  Both  men  drew 
their  heads  sharply  below  the  parapet. 

"Sharpshooters,"  said  the  veteran.  "They  spotted  us  by 
that  star-shell/' 

"Chrissly  understood  now  what  it  was  that  sounded  like  the 
cracking  of  whips. 

in 

He  had  imagined  trench-warfare  a  continuous  round  of 
gas,  hand-grenades,  machine-gun  fire  and  high  explosives.  As 
time  wore  on,  he  thought  it  chiefly  a  test  of  patience  in  which 
day  and  night  were  singularly  alike.  Yet  variation  finally 
came  with  little  preamble.  He  found,  one  night,  that  he  was 
as  if  on  a  hill  over  which  the  clouds  piled  darkly  and  the  thun 
der  roiled,  while  all  the  bolts  of  lightning  from  a  tremendous 
storm  knifed  down  into  the  valley  behind. 

"Vas  is  los?"  he  cried. 

"That's  a  barrage !"  cried  the  veteran. 

"What  next,  anyways  ?"  said  Chrissly. 

They  were  ordered  into  the  dug-outs. 

"What  next  ?"  echoed  the  veteran,  after  he  had  flung  him 
self  upon  the  pile  of  questioning  men  heaped  in  the  narrow 
cave.  He  recovered  his  breath.  "This  means  a  raid,  this 
does!" 

For  a  long  while  the  storm  continued,  smashes,  shrieks, 
crashings  all  sounding  at  once  in  a  demoniacal  overture. 
Then,  as  the  din  lessened  ever  so  little,  there  sounded  above  it 
the  soul-shaking  notes  of  a  siren. 

"Gas !" 

With  incredible  speed,  the  pile  of  men  had  disentangled 
itself,  and  each  man  threw  before  his  face  the  grotesque  mask 
that,  at  any  distance  less  than  two  miles  from  the  front  line, 
each  soldier  must  wear  suspended  and  ready,  dangling  against 
his  chest.  The  order  for  fixed  bayonets  was  passed  by  signals, 
for  a  masked  man  can  not  speak — and  they  hurried  to  their 
stations  like  so  many  hooded  divers  scurrying  along  the  floor 
of  the  sea. 

Across  the  vast  ash-heap  of  No  Man's  Land,  it  was  coming : 


118  VICTORIOUS 

the  gas.  It  rolled  toward  them  silently,  but  without  halt, 
curving  a  blue-gray  cloud,  stealthy  yet  swift,  sure  of  itself, 
malign,  deadly.  It  was  here.  Could  the  gas-masks  really  do 
all  that  the  officers  said  they  did?  The  gas  enveloped  the 
whole  line  of  trenches. 

The  violence  of  the  bombardment  recommenced.  Shells 
fell  near  now  and  still  nearer.  They  made  flashes  of  fire  di 
rectly  overhead.  One  appeared  to  rip  itself  in  two  above 
Chrissly  and  to  die  screaming.  A  portion  of  the  trench  leaped 
inward,  and  in  the  blast  of  flame  that  accompanied  its  fall, 
Chrissly  had  a  glimpse  of  flying  arms  and  legs. 

The  men  had  been  formed  closer  together.  They  were 
•poised  for  leaps.  The  gas-cloud  had  passed,  but  its  fatal 
fumes  remained,  and  the  men  retained  their  masks,  so  that, 
standing  ready  for  action,  they  resembled  hooded  cobras,  bal 
anced  to  strike.  Nobody  could  speak;  every  man  watched  his 
nearest  officer. 

Then  a  row  of  running  soldiers  became  visible  across  the 
ash-heap,  men  in  uniforms  of  greenish  gray.  The  Germans 
were  charging.  .  .  . 

The  Americans  were  over,  were  running  toward  the  advanc 
ing  enemy. 

Chrissly  was  running  with  his  comrades.  Into  his  gas 
mask  he  was  trying  to  shout  curses  upon  the  Germans. 

They  were  about  to  meet.    An  instant  more  now — 

They  met. 

In  the  shock  of  contact,  Chrissly's  mind  was  yelling 
"Cochon! — Va-t-en,  coclion!"  It  was  an  unconscious  repeti 
tion  of  the  first  words  that  he  had  heard  Leonie  utter,  and  it 
was  in  part  the  result  of  the  feeling  that,  since  these  aliens 
understood  neither  Pennsylvania-Dutch  nor  yet  English,  they 
must  be  familiar  with  the  only  foreign  language  that  Chrissly 
knew  anything  about.  .  .  . 

He  came  out  of  the  raid  untouched.  When  at  last  his  unit 
was  relieved  and  ordered  back  to  the  village  whence  it  had 
started  for  the  front,  he  sought  out  Leonie  as  soon  as  he  had 
bathed  and  scorched  the  lice  from  his  clothes  with  a  hot  iron 


VICTORIOUS  119 

tHat  the  company-barber  had  somehow  got  hold  of.  He  tried 
to  tell  her  how  he  had  remembered  her. 

Leonie  was  a  phial  of  emotion  tinctured  by  a  sturdy  dis 
trust  of  man.  Her  eyes  glowed  at  the  sight  of  him,  but  she 
heard  him  with  laughter. 

"It  will  be  a  fine  thing  to  write  to  your  wife,"  she  said. 

"I  haven't  any  wife,"  Chrissly  protested. 

"Oh,  la,  la,  Id!"  laughed  Leonie.  "All  these  Americans 
have  wives.  Come  into  the  kitchen,  and  I  shall  give  you  some 


IV 


Chrissly  and  the  other  men  that  had  been  to  the  front  kept 
themselves,  and  were  kept,  almost  as  much  as  might  be  in 
view  of  the  less  fortunate  soldiers  billeted  in  their  village. 
Each  was  the  willing  center  of  a  group  of  eager  questioners 
and  listeners.  These  fighters  had  been  the  first  of  their  ardent 
little  army  to  see  real  warfare,  and  they  were  as  proud  of  it 
as  their  fellows  were  curious. 

There  had  been  times  when  Chrissly  found  it  hard  to  steal 
away  to  Leonie,  and  there  was  another  reason  why  he  felt 
that  he  ought  to  walk  with  circumspection  :  letters  from  home 
were  beginning  slowly  to  filter  through  the  congested  military 
mail-service  of  the  A.  E.  F.,  and  all  this  served  to  bring  the 
Amishman-born  closer  again  to  Minnie  Taylor.  He  was  rap 
idly  developing  into  a  thorough  soldier,  occasionally  he  un 
consciously  assumed  an  air  of  trooper-sophistication  not  un 
becoming;  but  he  was  troubled. 

Leonie  delighted  to  add  to  his  troubles.  She  seemed  to 
realize  that  she  baffled  him  by  her  ignorance  of  many  arts 
with  a  ready-made  knowledge  of  which  he  thought  American 
girl-babies  entered  the  world;  inviolably  she  raised  that  ig 
norance  between  them  as  if  it  were  a  subrisive  mask,  and 
from  behind  it  she  launched  again  and  again  the  disquieting 
postulation  of  a  Mrs.  Chrissly  at  home. 

Andy  came  upon  him  as  he  was  leaving,  reluctantly,  one 


120  VICTORIOUS 

of  his  soldier  audiences,  and  Chrissly  engulfed  the  corre 
spondent  with  gratitude  for  the  forwarded  newspapers  and 
with  undisguised  joy  at  reunion  with  a  man  from  his  own 
countryside.  The  young  giant  grew  voluble  over  his  trench- 
experiences. 

"It's  fine,  fightin',"  said  Chrissly:  "you  feel  like's  if  you 
was  at  las'  doin'  somesing ;  but  them  there  org  shells !  Why, 
Brown,  it  gits  so's  it  seems  your  insides  of  your  ears  can't 
stand  no  more  noise." 

It  was  only  practice  that  the  Americans  were  doing,  as  the 
communique  had  said.  They  would  go  up,  a  battalion  or  two 
at  a  time,  and  then  return  to  the  old  grind  at  camp ;  perhaps 
in  January  they  might  begin  to  be  a  geim-wine  army  by  tak 
ing  over  a  small  sector  for  keeps. 

"All  us  fellows,"  said  Chrissly,  "we  come  here  to  fight, 
an'  we  want  to  fight,  still ;  we  don't  want,  when  we  git  trained 
a'ready,  to  be  held  back;  but  the  commandin'  chincral,  I 
guess  he's  afraid  if  we  go  in  under  the  French  like  the  French 
want  we  should  go,  why,  where's  his  job?  Things  ain't  right, 
Brown,"  said  Chrissly,  with  a  slow  head-shake.  "0'  course 
no  common  soldier  don't  dare  say  so  still  where  any  offcer 
could  hear  him,  ner  yet  write  his  folks  nothin'  but  'Sunny 
France'  f  fear  o'  court-martial,  but  you'd  ought  fer  to  know 
the  troos  about  the  close  an'  the  ammunition — all  us  fellows 
is  talkin'  about  it  on  the  quiet — an'  you'd  ought  fer  to  go  to 
Tours  and  Issoudun  an'  git  fer  why  there  ain't  aeroplanes 
to  pertect  us  when  we're  down  in  them  there  trenches,  an' 
most  of  our  casualties  was  because  we  hadn't  no  aeroplanes. 
An'  you  had  ought  to  get  a  piece  in  the  papers  home  still 
about  it." 

Tours  and  Issoudun?  Andy  had  not  heard  that  there  was 
any  news  at  these  places.  He  remembered  that  one  of  Gar- 
cia's  first  warnings  to  him  was  to  dwell  on  the  infantry. 

"But  there's  one  sing's  fine,"  said  Chrissly,  "an'  that's  the 
men.  They're  cold  an'  they're  wet,  Brown;  they  don't  git 
their  letters  like  they'd  ought;  an'  their  folks'  presents  to 
*em,  they're  robbed  in  our  own  army-mails;  they're  livin' 
here  in  a  pneumony  part  of  the  country  an'  sleepin'  over  the 


VICTORIOUS  121 

cows ;  they  ain't  got  good  shoes  er  winter  uniforms,  an'  'most 
of  'em  ain't  got  no  socks  at  all;  but  they  ain't  quitters,  an' 
they're  goin'  to  be  the  best  fighters  this  here  war's  ever  saw." 

Having  an  appointment  with  Leonie  that  he  dared  not 
break  and  did  not  want  to  break,  but  that  he  thought  it  safer 
to  make  a  meeting  of  three,  he  conducted  Andy  to  the  rear 
of  the  inn  and  took  him,  by  passages  through  which  Chrissly 
himself  had  often  delightfully  adventured  with  his  French 
acquaintance,  to  a  stone-flagged  outer-kitchen,  long  disused, 
where  Leonie  spread  them  a  splendid  luncheon  of  her  own 
cooking  and  brought  them  from  a  secret  cellar  a  bottle  of 
old  Mousigny,  with  tremendous  precautions  against  detection 
at  the  hands  of  M.  le  Proprietaire. 

For  days  Andy  worked  quietly  and  hard.  He  began  with 
the  desperately  clutched  hope  that  his  own  fears  and  Chriss- 
ly's  declarations  were  mistaken;  he  ended  face  to  face  with 
confirmation.  The  training  was  not  properly  progressing. 
Housing  and  clothing  conditions  were  such  that  only  the  ex 
cellence  of  the  medical-service  had  prevented  an  alarming 
death-rate. 

"And  we're  getting  mighty  little  help  from  the  War  De 
partment,"  medical-officer  after  medical-officer  told  him.  "I 
don't  know  what  we'd  do  without  the  Red  Cross.  They  even 
lend  the  camions  that  the  army  can't  supply;  there  isn't  a 
splint  or  a  bandage  in  any  of  these  hospitals  that  came 
through  the  War  Department:  the  Red  Cross  gave  us  every 
last  one  of  them.  Over  a  month  ago  we  had  to  buy  a  billion 
francs'  worth  of  medical  supplies  from  the  French — and  the 
bill's  still  unpaid." 

The  doctors  were  working  in  a  maze  of  enormous  perplex 
ity.  Their  quarters  were  makeshift,  their  supplies  deficient, 
their  corps  of  assistants  numerically  inadequate;  the  assign 
ment  of  rank  and  the  management  of  promotions  put  men  of 
executive  training  into  practical  surgery  and  practical  sur 
geons  into  executive  positions ;  a  young  doctor  with  friends  in 
power  was  commissioned  and  sent  abroad  to  make  an  imme 
diate  report  on  "Surgery  in  the  Zone  of  Advance"  when  there 
was  no  advance,  while  an  officer  of  ten  years'  experience  as  a 


122  VICTOKIOUS 

hospital-administrator  in  the  Canal  Zone  remained  a  power 
less  lieutenant:  the  system  had  less  regard  for  individual 
training  and  qualification  than  for  preserving  its  own  in 
tegrity. 

The  only  disease  widely  prevalent  was  homesickness.  A 
runaway  boy  with  whom  Andy  made  friends  was  a  rough 
young  soldier  from  Cincinnati.  He  had  quarreled  with  his 
father  and  vowed  never  to  communicate  with  him;  but,  once 
the  dreary  life  of  the  winter  camp  secured  its  effect,  he  wrote. 
Andy  was  with  him  when  the  answer  came,  that  boy's  first 
news  from  his  home  since  he  left  it,  many  months  before. 

"It's  pop's  writing,  all  right,"  he  said. 

He  tore  the  letter  open  and  began  joyously  to  read  it  aloud. 
Then  he  crushed  it  between  his  great  hands :  it  contained  the 
news  that  his  mother  had  died  twelve  weeks  ago. 

"I'm  on  guard-duty  to-night,"  he  said  dully.  That  was 
all  he  said :  "I've  got  to  do  guard-duty  to-night." 

Andy's  eyes  filled.  "I  know  I  can  fix  it  with  your  captain 
to  get  you  relieved." 

The  soldier  faced  him.  "No,  thanks.  I'm  going  through 
with  this  thing — with  the  whole  damned  business:  that's 
what  I'm  here  for." 

"Isn't  there,"  asked  Andy,  thinking  of  his  own  home — 
"isn't  there  anything  I  can  do?" 

The  soldier  emptied  his  pockets  of  their  contents:  five 
hundred  francs  in  dirty,  half-torn  notes. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "I  had  a  little  run  of  luck  at  craps  to-day. 
I'd  be  glad  if  you  could  get  me  a  money-order  for  this,  or 
something.  I  guess  the  old  man  can  use  a  little  now."  He 
turned  away,  but  not  before  Andy  had  heard  him  gulp: 
"God!  When  are  they  goin'  to  let  us  fight?" 

The  lesser  officers  that  Andy  talked  with  tried  to  turn  their 
homesickness  into  a  joking  commentary  on  their  life  here: 
"Siberia  hasn't  got  anything  on  'Somewhere,' "  grinned  a 
lieutenant — "except  for  whiskers  and  salt-mines.  I've  got  a 
gasoline-lamp  that  explodes  ten  times  for  me,  a  mere  lieu 
tenant,  and  I  can't  guess  how  many  times  for  a  general,  but 
when  the  gas  runs  out  and  sets  fire  to  the  room,  everything 


VICTOEIOUS 

is  warm  and  comfortable  until  the  regimental  fire-department 
butts  in.  Then  the  only  way  to  keep  near  blood-heat's  to  drink 
this  brunette  liquid  that  the  angels  call  le  noir." 

Andy  saw  one  soldier  exhaust  his  flash-lamp  watching  a 
Red  Cross  woman  canteen-worker  on  a  night  when  the  camp 
lights  failed,  yet  never  approach  her.  He  heard  another  ad 
dress  some  comrades: 

"Damn  it,  there's  a  damned  sign  up  there  says  there's  goin' 
to  be  one  o'  those  damned  church-services  in  the  damned  town- 
square  Sunday  morning  with  our  damned  sky-pilot  presidin'. 
I  used  to  go  to  the  damned  things  at  home  sometimes,  and 
Fm  damned  if  I'm  not  goin'  to  this  one  here." 

Ankle  deep  in  the  mud  of  a  village  street  and  huddled  un 
der  the  eaves  of  a  dripping  cottage  were  three  men,  of  a  late 
afternoon,  to  whom  Andy  listened. 

"I've  been  up  to  Paris,"  said  the  first,  "an'  I  got  out  tudy- 
sweet.  Heard  a  hell  of  a  lot  about  Paris — before  I  went 
there;  but  you  take  it  from  me,  kid,  it's  old  Philadelphia  has 
the  prettiest  women  in  the  world." 

The  second  man  snorted.  "Philadelphia  ?"  he  said.  "How 
about  Denver,  old  top?" 

The  third  man  demanded:  "Say,  you  fellows,  speakin'  o' 
real  folks,  was  either  of  you  guys  ever  in  my  home-town? 
I  come  from  Kansas  City,  I  do." 

When  Andy  moved  on,  there  was  every  prospect  of  a  fight 
over  the  question  of  what  American  city  produces  the  highest 
degree  of  beauty. 

These  and  many  other  men  in  the  army  were  in  a  purgatory 
of  unremitting  discomfort.  The  billets  were  seriously  over 
crowded;  a  shipment  of  boots,  overcoats  and  other  articles  of 
clothing  proved  to  be  of  odd  sizes;  instead  of  feeding  itself 
the  Expeditionary  Force  was  compelled  to  consume  enormous 
quantities  of  French  supplies,  and  the  short-rationed  French 
peasants  knew  it  and  grumbled. 

There  were  all  sorts  of  stories  current,  some  reflecting  on 
the  good  manners  of  American  generals,  others  on  the  fairness 
of  the  French—that  they  gouged  our  men  on  everything  they 


124:  VICTOKIOUS  H 

bought.  Among  these  asseverations,  the  patent  one  was  thati 
French  officers  acting  as  instructors  at  the  camp  were  dis 
placed  by  untried  Americans,  and  there  was  a  general  belief 
that  the  staffs  of  the  French  and  American  armies  were,  be 
cause  of  this  and  other  disconcerting  events,  upon  only  the 
most  formal  terms. 

Letters  and  papers  from  home  distressed  Andy  with  their 
assertions  that  no  decision  had  yet  been  reached  on  field  guns, 
and  that  contracts  had  been  awarded  only  recently  for  ma 
chine  guns.  In  the  meanwhile  the  men  in  the  various  can 
tonments  were  getting  their  training  from  blue-prints  and 
wooden  models  of  the  gun  that  was  yet  to  be  manufactured. 

Andy  felt  desperately  the  urge  to  do  something,  something 
to  make  the  folks  back  home  understand  the  terrible  neces 
sity  for  haste,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  he  realized  how  futile 
his  efforts  would  be,  how  ineffectual  his  pen  against  the  com 
placent  crust  of  a  vast,  slow-moving,  highly-organized  govern 
mental  department. 

The  further  Andy  sought  and  the  more  he  thought,  the 
greater  was  his  bewilderment.  For  some  of  the  conditions, 
at  home  as  well  as  abroad,  more  or  less  valid  excuses  might 
be  found ;  he  made  due  allowance  for  the  fallibility  of  human 
judgment,  for  the  bigness  of  the  task,  for  our  unpreparedness, 
and  for  our  lack  of  military  experience.  And  yet  when  the 
discounts  were  made  and  excuses  all  registered  the  unex 
plained  totality  was,  to  Andy,  overwhelming.  All  authorities 
agreed  that  artillery  was  the  vital  essential  in  trench  warfare, 
that  unless  the  infantry  was  adequately  supported  by  artillery 
it  could  mean  only  one  thing — slaughter.  Yet — !  Andy  threw 
up  his  hands  in  despair.  An  expeditionary  force  made  up  of 
men  as  fine  and  brave  and  young  and  exalted  as  ever  went  forth 
in  the  cause  of  righteousness,  asking  only  that  they  might 
strike  a  blow  for  their  precious  democratic  ideals,  these 
men — Andy's  brothers  from  home — were  they  to  be  needlessly 
sacrificed?  That  was  what  it  would  mean  if  they  went  in 
unsupported  by  adequate  artillery.  Such  a  situation  was  un 
believable  ! 


VICTOKIOUS  125 

We  had  been  buying  aeroplanes  from  Italy,  but  to  add  to 
Andy's  distress,  he  was  told  that  Italy  could  sell  us  no  more. 
He  made  a  visit  to  one  of  our  chief  aeroplane  schools,  and  to 
his  amazement  learned  that  there  were  so  few  planes  that  a 
lesson  in  practise  flying  was  limited  to  ten  minutes.  It  didn't 
require  an  expert  to  know  that  at  this  rate  it  would  take 
many  months  to  develop  an  ace. 

Andy  was  as  nearly  hopeless  as  he  had  ever  been  in  his 
young  life — ragingly,  desperately  hopeless,  for  while  we 
muffed  and  muddled,  Germany  was  preparing  for  her  greatest 
offensive. 


Andy  sought  the  barn  in  which  Chrissly  was  quartered.  It 
was  a  low  stone  building  with  a  slit  for  a  window  in  the  low 
damp  loft  where  men  were  billeted  and  whence  they  descended 
by  a  ladder,  to  the  ground  on  which  the  owner's  cows  had 
their  home.  Into  the  muddy  street,  from  the  dark  doorway, 
there  rolled  the  smell  of  housed  cattle.  All  the  human  dwellers 
in  the  place  were  lined  up  outside  under  such  protection  from 
the  rain  as  was  afforded  by  the  sodden  eaves.  They  stamped 
their  broken  boots;  they  flapped  their  arms;  their  faces  and 
fingers  were  blue  with  cold,  and  their  thin  clothes  fluttered 
about  them.  Somebody  was  always  coughing:  an  infection 
they  called  "Trench-throat"  caused  recurrent  spasmodic  con 
tractions  of  the  larynx.  Some  of  the  hardier  had  taken  off 
their  jackets  and  were  hunting  in  the  seams  for  lice. 

All  up  and  down  the  curving  village  street  were  similar 
groups. 

"It's  true,"  he  said  to  Chrissly — "what  you  told  me  is  true." 

Chrissly  blew  a  visible  blast  upon  his  aching  hands.  "Sure 
it's  true,  Brown,"  he  said.  He  stamped  his  feet,  bending  his 
body  from  side  to  side,  and  trying  to  drag  over  his  wrists  the 
too  short  sleeves  of  his  blouse.  "We  don't  mind  the  trenches ; 
we  all  want  to  fight  still ;  but  f er  why,  if  they're  not  goin'  to 
let  us  fight,  don't  they  send  us  winter  clothes?" 


126  VICTORIOUS 

There  was  a  wiry  little  man  beside  him,  in  whose  eyes 
burned  the  fire  of  fever. 

"An'  why  don't  they  give  us  our  pay?"  he  demanded.  "We 
ain't  seen  a  cent  for  months,  we  ain't." 

"The  folks  at  home  is  all  right,"  said  Chrissly — "the  real 
folks — but  you'd  ought  to  let  them  know  the  troos,  Brown. 
Somebody's  got  to  do  it;  and  the  brass  hats  over  here  can't 
make  the  brass  hats  at  home  do  nothin' — or  else  they  don't  try 
none." 

"Cheese  it  \"  hissed  the  wiry  man.    "Provost !" 

His  fevered  eyes  had  caught  sight  of  an  officer,  the  local 
provost  marshal,  coming  through  the  mud.  The  officer  passed, 
his  chin  up,  his  eyes  fixed  before  him.  He  wore  heavy  boots 
and  a  warm  overcoat. 

Heels  clicked.  The  men  came  to  soldierly  attention;  they 
stiffly  saluted.  The  officer,  still  looking  rigidly  ahead,  made, 
in  response,  an  abortive  upward  movement  with  his  crooked 
right  hand. 

Not  a  word  of  any  sort  was  uttered  until  he  was  out  of 
earshot.  Then  the  men  gathered  about  Andy  and  told  him 
over  again  the  things  he  already  knew. 

VI 

One  night,  by  a  candle,  in  an  uncarpeted  inn-room,  he 
wrote  to  Sylvia: 

"I  am  going  to  do  my  duty,  as  you  saw  it  and  as  I  saw  it ; 
but  it's  a  hard  duty.  If  I  could  only  fight!  .  .  . 

"We  weren't  ready.  And  after  all  these  months  of  being 
in  the  war,  we  aren't  ready  now.  The  few  men  we've  got  here 
want  to  fight — enlisted  men  and  line-officers;  but  whatever's 
responsible  for  the  A.  E.  F.'s  clothes  and  food  and  arms  and 
ammunition— somebody  or  something  must  be  responsible ! — 
hasn't  turned  a  hand  to  get  these  things  over  here.  It's  all  a 
terrible  muddle. 

"I'll  write,  if  one  fellow's  writing  can  help.    .    .    . 

"I  believe  I  couldn't  do  it  if  it  wasn't  for  you.  You're  like 
a  sort  of  Joan  of  Arc  to  me.  You  are  Joan  of  Arc.  .  .  . 


VICTORIOUS  127 

You  have  such  faith,  and  you're  so  brave.  You  don't  seem 
ever  to  doubt.  That  makes  me  brave  and  faithful;  if  I  were 
more  worthy  of  you,  it  would  make  me  so  as  I'd  never  doubt, 
too.  I  think  about  you  as  if  you  were  the  whole  spirit  of 
France  and  America — the  Spirit  of  Democracy.  I've  always 
wanted  to  tell  you  this  and  never  had  the  nerve.  But  I  can 
put  it  in  a  letter,  anyhow.  .  .  ." 

He  placed  the  missive  in  a  stamped  envelope  and  addressed 
it  to  her.  But  he  did  not  send  it.  He  carried  it  with  him,  next 
his  heart. 

VII 

He  went  to  the  aviation-stations  and  met  the  head  of  our 
aviation-service  in  France.  A  tall,  broad-shouldered,  black- 
haired  man  with  an  aggressive  jaw  and  the  brow  of  an  eagle, 
this  officer  had  been  goaded  beyond  the  last  limits  of  military 
reticence.  He  had  given  up  his  hardly-won  position  as  counsel 
to  a  great  corporation  for  a  colonelcy  in  the  expeditionary 
forces,  and,  since  he  had  a  life-long  knowledge  of  flying,  was 
placed  in  his  present  position ;  but  he  was  checked  by  superiors 
with  but  little  knowledge  of  the  air,  and  the  red  tape  of  the 
regular  army  was  killing  him.  He  put  his  case  with  the 
blunt  frankness  of  the  hopeless: 

"I  have  to  answer  for  the  A.  E.  F/s  aviation-service:  the 
staff  won't  give  me  the  power  to  demand  improvement,  and 
the  War  Department's  aircraft-management  won't  give  me 
the  material.  Every  day  lost  means  a  loss  of  American  lives 
and  American  money  and  the  prolongation  of  the  war.  The 
other  day  I  cabled  Washington:  'For  God's  sake,  let  me  see 
just  one  of  your  promised  25,000  planes' — that  will  probably 
cost  me  my  place." 

Andy  had  never  seen  a  face  so  full  of  heartbreak. 

VIII 

Garcia  was  in  the  anteroom  of  the  press-division's  offices. 
He  was  trying  to  talk  to  a  thin,  excitable  French  journalist 
Ferlet,  the  same  man  that  had  been  with  Andy  at  the  siU 


128  VICTOBIOUS 

of  the  assemblage-plant,  along  the  projected  lines  of  com 
munication. 

"Here,  Brown,"  said  the  lieutenant,  "tell  me  what  this 
lemon  wants,  will  you?" 

Ferlet,  with  a  hail  of  gestures,  repeated  his  request. 

"He  says,"  Andy  interpreted,  "that  the  French  newspapers 
want  to  know  what  to  call  our  men." 

"Call 'em?  Call 'em  Americans.  That's  what  they  are." 

"But  he  means  a  nickname.  He  represents  a  sort  of  French 
press-club.  He  says  the  French  people  must  have  a  sobriquet 
for  us — a  term  of  affection,  he  calls  it.  They  have  poilu  for 
their  own  fellows,  he  says ;  'Tommy*  for  the  British  and  jasse 
and — What's  that?  Oh,  yes! — and  piotte  for  the  Belgians. 
He  says  our  men  don't  like  'Sammee.' " 

"They  don't,"  nodded  Garcia. 

"And  then,"  pursued  Andy,  "he  says" —  Andy  questioned 
the  Frenchman  to  corroborate  his  memory  of  something  that 
Ferlet  had  just  told  him;  Ferlet  nodded  —  "he  says  —  of 
course,  I  don't  believe  he's  correct,  but  he  says  the  French 
newspapers  were  told  'in  a  very  high  American  quarter' — 
those  are  his  words — not  to  use  'Teddy.'  He  says  that's  the 
word  the  people  had  adopted,  but  'a  higE  American  quar 
ter"'— 

"That's  right,"  said  Garcia.  He  was  blinking  into  space, 
in  the  way  he  had,  when  hurrying  over  rough  places.  "Tell 
him  to  call  'em  Americans." 

"But  what's  the  objection—" 

Garcia  was  standing  by  a  desk.  He  brought  the  palm  of 
a  hand  upon  it  with  a  bang. 

"We're  not  here  to  pick  fancy  names  for  the  French  peo 
ple,"  he  cried.  "Tell  him  to  call  us  'Yanks,'  then." 

"He  says  the  French  can't  pronounce  it,"  Andy  reported. 

"Then  tell  him  this  is  my  busy  day,"  said  Garcia. 

Andy  made  a  polite  version  of  the  dismissal.  When  the 
Frenchman  had  left,  disconsolate,  Garcia  asked: 

"Now,  what's  your  trouble,  eh?" 

"I'd  like  to  see  Major  Curtis." 

Garcia  drew  together  suspicious  brows. 


VICTOKIOUS  129 

"He's  tied  up  in  a  conference." 

"I'll  wait." 

"He  can't  see  you." 

"Isn't  he  the  chief  of  this  bureau  ?"  asked  Andy. 

"I'm  in  charge  of  it.  What  do  you  want  to  see  him  about  ?" 

It  was  difficult  to  be  propitiatory,  but  upon  propitiation 
Andy  was  determined : 

"I  want  to  see  him  about  a  lot  of  things — a  clothing-story, 
and  an  ammunition-story  and  an  aviation-story." 

The  lieutenant's  florid  face  stiffened.  "Have  you  been  to. 
Tours?" 

"Tours  and  Issoudun." 

"How'd  you  get  a  pass?" 

"The  provost  marshal  at  the  camp  extended  the  one  I  had 
here." 

Garcia  put  out  a  clawlike  hand.  "Let  me  see  it."  Andy 
surrendered  the  rubber-stamped  paper.  "Come  in  here,"  said 
Garcia,  as  he  looked  at  it.  He  led  the  way  to  his  office  and 
carefully  closed  the  door.  "If  any  one  comes,  tell  'em  to 
wait,"  he  commanded  the  orderly  that  he  left  outside.  Then, 
with  disconcertingly  unusual  heartiness,  he  asked  Andy  to 
sit  down.  "Now,  then,"  he  said,  cocking  his  feet  on  the  desk, 
"tell  me  all  about  it,  old  man." 

"It's  a  fact,"  stipulated  the  cautious  Andy,  taking  the  in 
dicated  chair,  "that  you  represent  Major  Curtis?" 

"Sure  it  is.    I'm  in  charge  to-day,  and  what  I  say  goes." 

"Well,  then,"  said  Andy — and  poured  out  his  entire  story 
of  the  American  camp.  He  had  determined  to  play  his  game 
openly. 

Garcia  picked  his  teeth  and  listened.  His  face  gave  no 
indication  of  either  approval  or  disapproval. 

"Then  what?"  he  asked. 

"Then  what?"  Andy  echoed. 

"Then  you  went  to  the  aviation-stations,  didn't  you?" 

"Yes,"  said  Andy,  "and  here's  what  I  found  out  there;  it 
wouldn't  be  fair  to  quote  my  authority,  but  it  was  the  best : 
I  found  out  that  there  isn't  a  trace  over  here  of  the  $640,000,- 
000  for  aircraft  construction  that  Congress  appropriated  away 


130  VICTOKIOUS 

last  June.  I  found  out  that  the  automobile  manufacturers, 
the  fellows  given  complete  control  of  production,  are  trying 
to  build  planes  around  this  Liberty  motor,  instead  of  copying 
approved  types,  and  won't  have  developed  one  solitary  fight 
ing-plane  by  the  end  of  next  summer." 

He  paused,  but  Garcia  remaining  silent,  he  went  on: 

"By  the  end  of  next  summer  we  won't  have  a  single  Amer 
ican-made  chasse  in  France,  and  not  a  single  heavy  bomber. 
They  say  they're  going  to  make  six  hundred  De  Haviland 
Fours,  and  I  got  it  from  the  best  sources  that  we  wouldn't 
have  seventy-five  of  them  by  August.  One  or  two  machines 
are  said  to  be  on  their  way  here,  sent  uninspected  'because 
of  an  overseas  order.'  We're  going  to  try  to  buy  from  the 
French  and  English,  who  can't  afford  to  sell.  The  whole 
thing  looks  bad,  and  there's  evidently  some  one  over  here 
who's  business  it  is  to  see  that  nobody  makes  a  fuss  about  it." 

That  deeper  flush  which  was  a  danger-signal  had  entered 
into  Garcia's  cheeks.  He  moved  his  toothpick. 

"We  haven't  got  the  men,"  Andy  continued.  "What  men 
we  have  got  are  not  equipped  and  are  not  regularly  paid. 
Their  home-mail's  held  up,  they're  poorly  clothed,  and  their 
training's  virtually  stopped.  There's  not  a  department  that's 
not  in  nearly  as  bad  a  fix  as  the  aviation.  We'll  lose  out  to 
the  Boche  unless  these  things  are  remedied.  If  the  public 
learns  the  facts,  it  will  bring  Washington  round  in  time  to 
win  the  war.  I'm  going  to  tell  the  public  the  facts." 

Garcia's  feet  were  jerked  from  the  desk-top.  "That's  in 
formation  of  value  to  the  enemy !" 

"If  the  American  people  don't  get  it,  they'll  be  licked," 
said  Andy  calmly. 

Garcia  snapped  his  long  fingers.  "How  do  you  think  you'll 
get  it  across?  You  know  well  enough  we  won't  pass  a  line 
of  it." 

Andy  rose.  "That's  what  I  wanted  to  get  your  decision  on," 
he  said.  He  started  for  the  door. 

"Wait  a  minute !" 

Andy  looked  back.  Garcia's  gaze  was  almost  white.  Over 
His  prominent  cheek-bones  the  skin  was  twitching. 


VICTOEIOUS  131 

"You  know  we  can  send  you  home/'  lie  said. 

"And  you  know/'  said  Andy,  "that  I  can  take  my  story  in 
my  head  along  with  me." 

"Wait  a  minute!"  Garcia  for  a  second  time  commanded. 

"Do  you  understand  that  what  you're  going  to  try  to  do  is  a 
violation  of  army  regulations?" 

There  was  a  row  of  books  on  Garcia's  desk.  From  it  Andy 
drew  a  copy  of  the  blue-bound  manual  of  field  service.  He 
opened  it  at  its  eighth  section. 

"That's  my  authority/'  he  said. 

Garcia's  restraint  shattered  from  him.  With  a  sweep  of 
his  right  hand  he  knocked  the  little  book  to  the  floor. 

"To  hell  with  that!"  he  cried.  "I  don't  give  a  damn 
for  that !  I  tell  you  once  and  for  all :  if  you  try  this  thing 
on,  I'll  get  you — and  get  you  right!  Mind  you,  now" 
— he  raised  a  prophetic  fist — "I've  had  trouble  enough  with 
you,  and  I'm  gettin'  tired  talkin'.  You  can't  do  this  thing 
if  you  try,  and  if  you  do  try,  I'll  get  you !" 

"Good  afternoon,"  said  Andy. 

IX 

Who  were  truly  representative  of  the  war-meaning  of  Amer 
ica  :  the  private  soldiers,  eager  to  forget  their  undeserved  and 
unnecessary  hardships  and  to  give  their  lives  for  democracy 
— they,  or  the  secret  forces  for  which  Garcia  spoke?  Those 
would  face  death  gladly,  these  would  watch  the  sacrifice  with 
cynical  laughter.  Was  democracy  a  lie  ?  Was  all  this  muddle 
the  true  expression  of  civilization,  was  this  man  "the  reason 
able  creature"  at  his  highest  development?  The  instalment- 
plan  Universal  History  on  the  center-table  at  home  taught 
how  England  went  to  war  with  Spain  because  of  Jenkins'  ear ; 
were  we  at  war  for  less  idealistic  reasons  than  Andy  had  sup 
posed  when  he  left  Americus,  and  was  Garcia  an  agent  of  cor- 
ruptionists  ? 

After  all  his  efforts  at  growth,  Andy  had  not  added  a  cubit 
to  his  stature ;  he  was  still  much  of  the  boy  that  most  of  those 
soldiers  at  the  camp  were,  and  it  was  toward  them  that,  like 


132  VICTORIOUS 

calling  unto  like,  he  swung.  His  religion  was  the  boy's  re 
ligion,  something  accepted  with  faith  so  unquestioning  as 
rarely  to  demand  any  thought  about  religion  once  the  accept 
ance  had  been  accomplished;  but  now  he  began  to  see  these 
two  phases  of  the  American  effort,  the  great  and  good  side 
and  the  side  small  and  evil,  as  creating  an  issue  essentially 
religious,  the  ancient  gnostic  issue  between  right  and  wrong. 

It  would  be  so  much  easier  for  him  if  he  could  only  fight. 
Doctors  were  fallible.  .  .  . 

Still  boyishly,  he  that  evening  wrote  and  posted  a  long  let 
ter  containing  all  the  information  that  he  had  gathered  con 
cerning  conditions  in  the  A.  E.  F.  It  suggested  that  these 
were  ills  that  should  be  known  by  the  persons  in  power  in 
order  to  bring  about  correction,  yet  ills  that  could  easily  be, 
and  probably  were,  hidden  from  the  notice  of  the  officials, 
concerned  with  so  vast  plans  as  to  have  small  time  for  details. 
This  letter  he  addressed  to  the  general  commanding  the 
American  forces  in  France. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

DEVOUTLY  DEVOTED  TO  TROUBLE 

ANDY  wrote  that  letter  in  his  character  of  a  correspondent 
representing  the  free  press  of  America  and  officially  accred 
ited  by  the  War  Department  to  the  United  States  Army.  He 
wrote  out  of  the  sense  of  a  dual  duty :  to  help  win  the  war  and 
to  secure  fair  treatment  for  the  private  soldiers  upon  whom, 
in  the  last  analysis,  must  rest  the  burden  of  battle.  In  what 
he  believed  to  be  the  joint  cause  of  America  and  of  America's 
enlisted  men,  he  drew  a  brief  that  ought,  he  felt,  to  necessitate 
an  investigation.  Then,  having  thus  appealed  to  Caesar,  he 
realized  that  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  wait  Caesar's  decision. 

It  was  no  easy  task.  Sylvia's  tour  lengthened  itself,  and 
she  did  not  write :  he  had  to  be  content  with  distant  dreams 
of  her.  Blunston  cabled  him,  "Do  your  duty,"  which  Andy 
conceived  himself  as  already  doing,  and  sent  a  letter,  develop 
ing  that  phrase,  which  did  not  reach  its  destination  until  after 
the  duty,  as  both  agreed  in  seeing  it,  was  done.  Andy  was 
aware  that,  from  so  busy  and  exalted  a  personage  as  him  to 
whom  the  appeal  had  been  made  no  reply  should  be  expected 
soon,  so  he  expended  his  young  enthusiasm  in  compositions 
addressed  to  Sylvia,  but  never  sent,  and  in  epistles  to  his 
mother,  in  which  he  recanted  from  all  his  early  ideals  of 
woman  as  a  creature  of  idleness  and  exalted  the  figure  of  the 
woman  that  works. 

Owen  Evans  grew  daily  more  pessimistic.  When  Andy,  still 
too  timid  to  tell  of  his  appeal,  would  seek  to  find  comfort  by 
hinting  at  the  good  points  of  the  person  to  whom  that  appeal 
had  been  directed,  Evans  would  snort  skepticism. 

"I  think  he'd  be  all  right,"  said  Andy,  "if  the  War  Depart 
ment  would  only  hurry  men  and  supplies." 

133 


J34  VICTOKIOUS 

The  mysterioiis  and  magnificent  McGregor  was  more  of  a 
comfort  in  every  way.  His  optimism  was  tonic,  in  spite  of 
Andy's  doubts  and  mental  reservations.  His  friend  from 
Chicago  knew  the  most  expensive  dining  places,  as  well  as  the 
old  and  out-of-the-way  ones,  though  he  declared  them  much 
inferior  to  those  of  the  city  of  his  enthusiasm.  He  enjoyed, 
immensely,  taking  Andy  from  place  to  place,  to  the  obvious 
cafes  de  la  Paix  and  de  Paris,  to  Paillard's,  in  the  house 
where  Eossini  used  to  live,  and  to  Cairo's  and  the  Volney  and 
the  Ambassadeurs.  They  dined  seldom  at  the  Eitz  because 
McGregor  had  a  prejudice  'against  eating  in  the  hotel  in  which 
he  slept,  a  prejudice  that  many  men  who  travel  much,  share 
with  him.  He  knew  what  to  order  and  took  great  pride  in 
making  an  artistic  as  well  as  an  ample  selection,  with  the 
result  that  his  dinners  were  always  as  good  as  they  were  long. 

Andy  was  too  young  and  too  healthy  not  to  enjoy  them 
fully  and  uncritically.  Indeed,  he  enjoyed  them  and  his 
host's  never-failing,  though  sometimes  ancient  anecdotes,  so 
much  that  he  first  fell  to  describing  to  McGregor,  with  back 
ward-looking  fondness,  Americus-  and  the  home-life  there, 
and  thence  passed  easily  and  happily  to  more  than  a  mere 
mention  of  Sylvia :  except  in  matters  of  business,  Andy  always 
had  to  talk  of  what  was  nearest  his  heart,  and  when  the  elder 
man  admitted  that  his  meeting  with  Sylvia  had  created  an 
honest  admiration  for  her  beauty,  the  younger  replied  by 
praises  of  her  character  that  could  not  fail  to  betray  more  than 
Andy  would,  as  yet,  wholly  admit  to  his  inner  consciousness. 
The  contractor  encouraged  his  talk,  said  that  he  was  a  re- 
newer  of  youth  and  a  companion  among  strangers,  received 
a  full  picture  of  his  guest's  past  and  present  and,  respecting 
the  boy's  pride,  even  submitted  to  be  himself  an  occasional 
guest  at  such  dinners  as  Andy  could  provide  by  way  of  return. 
Something,  however,  kept  Andy's  lips  sealed  upon  all  that  he 
feared  about  affairs  in  the  A.  E.  F. :  he  rarely  spoke  of  the  war 
to  McGregor  and  then,  though  he  could  not  have  told  why, 
only  in  the  most  guarded  terms. 

So  passed  a  Christmas  unlike  any  within  Andy's  experience ; 


VICTORIOUS  135 

so  passed  a  lonely  and  homesick  New  Year's  Day,  and  still 
more  days,  and  still  there  was  no  echo  from  the  appeal  that 
Andy  had  written.  The  Foreign  Office  told  the  correspond 
ents,  in  more  and  more  details,  of  German  plans  for  a  stagger 
ing  offensive,  which  had  come  into  French  possession,  but 
which  France  would  be  in  a  hard  plight  either  to  frustrate  or 
repulse;  evidences  of  democracy's  muddle  increased  as  an  ink- 
drop  spreads  upon  blotting-paper;  the  strain  on  the  military 
liaison  was  serious ;  it  was  growing  daily  more  difficult  to  con 
ceal  American  delays  from  a  French  populace  daily  growing 
more  suspicious;  at  camp  there  was,  for  encouragement,  only 
speculation  upon  the  irrefrangible  spirit  of  the  line-officers 
and  enlisted  men. 

The  time  came  when  Andy  felt  he  could  bear  no  more  in 
silence.  It  came  in  Paris,  at  five  o'clock  of  a  January  after 
noon,  when  he  was  seated  with  Evans  between  a  bock  and  the 
windows  of  the  Cafe  Napolitain,  dully  watching  the  endless 
boulevard-procession  of  new  officers  and  old  reformes  and  of 
women  wounded  in  the  women's  way  and  never  to  be  cured. 
He  blurted  out  the  bare  statement  of  what  he  had  done. 

Evans  was  at  first  incredulous ;  then  he  burst  into  laughter, 
but  he  had  not  meant  it  for  unkindly  laughter,  and,  when  he 
saw  the  hurt  in  Andy's  frank  eyes,  he  apologized. 

"Why,  you  couldn't  have  hoped  for  an  answer!"  Evans 
nevertheless  insisted.  "What  was  in  your  brief,  anyhow  ?" 

Andy  told  him,  beginning  with  conditions  at  the  camp  and 
ending  with  the  ominous  prophecy  about  the  aeroplane  sit 
uation. 

It  was  the  latter  that  especially  interested  Evans.  "Some 
body  over  here  to  hush  up  the  aircraft  scandal  ?"  he  repeated 
when  Andy  had  concluded  with  an  expression  of  his  fears  in 
that  matter.  "Well,  I  just  guess  there  is,  and  he's  the  orig 
inal  Mr.  Fix-it:  the  American  people  haven't  the  ghost  of  a 
chance  to  hear  the  truth  about  aeroplanes.  I've  run  into  the 
man  a  couple  of  times,  and  I  think  he's  the  pleasantest  crook 
I  ever  met.  You  know  him :  I've  heard  you  speak  of  him  often 
lately,  but  it  wasn't  any  business  of  mine  to  put  jou  wise." 


136  VICTORIOUS 

"Who  is  it?"  asked  Andy,  but  he  knew  the  answer  with  a 
sudden  clarity. 

"B.  Frank  McGregor/'  said  Evans. 

Swiftly  Andy  recalled  his  first  distrust  of  the  contractor. 
He  recalled  how  McGregor  had  always  admitted  his  interest  in 
aviation. 

"I  don't  like  to  think  it"  he  said.  He  felt  himself  look* 
ing  guilty.  "He's  been  a  regular  prince  to  me." 

"Sure  he  is :  the  prince-business  is  his  business.  That's  how 
he  lives.  Besides,  I  guess  he  likes  you :  crooks  are  human  be 
ings.  But  don't  you  make  any  mistake  about  it :  I've  got  it 
from  half  a  dozen  sources,  only  nobody  can  get  it  printed: 
McGregor's  the  man." 

Andy  was  beleaguered  by  both  mortification  and  the  sense 
of  betrayal.  He  had  failed  of  being  the  keen-sighted  journal 
ist  of  his  ambition,  and  his  kinder  impulses  were  imposed 
upon  and  flouted  by  a  man  that  had  approached  him  in 
friendly  guise:  McGregor's  motive,  as  thus  seen,  could  have 
been  nothing  but  a  general  desire  to  keep  him,  as  a  reporter, 
unsuspicious. 

"You  mean  the  man  is  over  here  just  to  keep  things  quiet  ?" 

"Just  that.  It's  his  game  to  be  pleasant  to  everybody.  But 
I  don't  mean  he  isn't  pleasanter  to  some  fellows  than  to  others. 
If  he's  been  extra  pleasant  to  you,  it  was  probably  for  your 
own  sake."  Evans  smiled.  "Why  shouldn't  he  be?  I  like 
you  myself."  He  would  have  said  more;  but  his  eye  was 
caught  by  one  of  the  passing  pedestrians.  He  waved  his  hand. 
"Hello !"  he  cried. 

A  girl  answered  him.  She  was  a  swarthy  slip  of  a  girl  with 
lips  vermilion.  There  was  about  her  something  that  struck 
an  unfinished  chord  in  Andy's  memory. 

Evans  rose. 

"Come  here,"  he  invited  her,  cap  in  hand.  To  Andy  he 
whispered  from  a  corner  of  his  mouth :  "You  have  to  do  these 
things  sometimes,  my  son,  in  our  business.  That's  Garcia's 
girl.  I  met  her  with  him,  once.  She's  got  him  all  tied  up, 
and  she  talks  for  a  drink."  The  girl  was  edging  toward  them 
among  the  sidewalk-tables.  "Maybe  we'll  get  some  good  dope." 


VICTORIOUS  %  137 

She  was  beside  him  now.  Prom  a  great  muff  she  drew  one 
slim  hand  and  offered  it  to  Evans.  Her  profession  was  un 
mistakable,  but  she  was  very  pretty.  Andy  remembered  her 
at  last :  she  was  the  girl  that  he  had  seen  with  Garcia  at  the 
restaurant  on  the  Quai  des  Grands-Augustins. 

"Jacquette,"  said  Evans,  speaking  his  easy  inaccurate 
French,  "this  is  Mr.  Brown.  Sit  down.  What  will  you  have  ?" 

Red  to  his  eartops,  Andy  felt  that  he  discovered  himself  as 
unaccustomed  to  this  sort  of  company  and  was  the  more  po 
lite  because  he  feared  his  consequent  awkwardness  might  ap 
pear  as  discourtesy.  The  fact  that  such  women  received  so 
little  deference  seemed  to  him  to  make  deference  incumbent. 
Still  agitated  by  Evans'  matter-of-fact  accusation  of  Mc 
Gregor,  the  boy  was  unprepared  for  novel  society :  he  saw  her 
confident  assumption  of  a  place  at  their  table,  saw  her  order 
and  sip  a  bock,  heard  her  chatter  laughingly  with  his  compan 
ion  ;  but  he  realized  little  of  what  was  passing  until  Jacquette, 
skilfully  directed  by  Evans,  was  saying: 

"Ah,  that  poor  man,  M.  Garcia!  He  loves  me  so  much. 
Attend :  I  shall  read  you  the  letter  that  he  sent  me  the  other 
day." 

She  drew  a  big  purse  from  her  big  muff  and  an  envelope 
from  the  purse.  She  read  to  them  with  delighted  giggles  and 
extravagant  gestures  that  mimicked  a  buffoon  lover  of  the 
burlesque-stage.  It  appeared  that  Garcia  had  written  for  an 
appointment  and  that  she  was  even  now  late  for  it. 

Andy  felt  that  this  was  a  keyhole-performance.  It  was 
presently  evident  that  Evans  shared,  in  his  degree,  the  feeling, 
for  he  soon  interrupted : 

"You  ought  not  to  read  us  those  things.  They  are  confi 
dential/' 

Jacquette  only  giggled.    "What  matter  ?  A  man  like  that !"' 

"But  you  will  keep  the  appointment?" 

"Puff !"  The  girl  tightened  her  mouth  and  tilted  her  nose. 
"When  I  am  so  disposed.  There  is  no  hurry :  he  always  waits." 
She  ordered  another  bock.  "And  now  the  news  that  he  writes 
to  me.  Attend  again,  messieurs." 

She  resumed  her  reading  of  Garcia's  letter.     In  a  single 


138  VICTOKIOUS 

sentence,  he  informed  her  that  the  American  Expeditionary 
Force  would,  on  the  morrow  or  the  day  following,  end  its 
period  of  training  and  take  over,  in  real  earnest,  a  sector  of 
the  trench-line  northeast  of  Toul.  She  giggled  still  more  as 
she  read  the  appended  afterthought: 

"But  of  course  you  must  not  tell  this,  for  we  have  orders 
that  it  is  to  be  known  to  nobody,  and  I  tell  you  only  to  show 
you  how  much  I  love  you/'  , 

Probably  never  in  her  life  was  Jacquette  dismissed  so  sum 
marily  as  she  was  dismissed  by  Evans  as  soon  as  she  com 
municated  this  unexpected  piece  of  news. 

II 

In  the  utter  darkness  before  the  next  day's  dawn,  Andy, 
cloaked  from  chin  to  heels  in  his  raincoat,  and  looking  twice 
his  natural  bulk  under  the  layers  of  jerseys,  shirts  and  under 
clothes  that  wrapped  him,  tramped  along  the  empty  streets 
to  the  Gare  de  TEst. 

That  was  a  strange  Paris  which  lay  about  him,  an  empty 
Paris.  The  rue  Yivienne  was  like  a  prison-corridor ;  in  front 
of  the  corner-cafes,  the  chairs  and  tables  were  piled  head-high ; 
he  was  the  only  living  thing  that  moved  along  the  Grands 
Boulevards.  Here  and  there,  a  street-lamp  nickered  wanly 
like  the  gutting  candle  in  a  sickroom.  The  great  gray  walls 
tossed  back  the  noisy  echoes  of  his  hobnailed  boots;  had  he 
spoken,  it  would  have  been  in  a  whisper.  Everywhere  there 
brooded  the  spirit  of  expectancy.  The  very  shutters  of  the 
closed  shops  on  the  Boulevard  de  Magenta  suggested  to  Andy 
the  eyelids  of  a  man  that  veils  his  sight  when  he  holds  his 
breath.  It  was  as  if  all  France,  exhausted  by  forty  months  of 
war,  leaned,  half-fainting,  against  her  ramparts  in  wait  for 
such  help  as  America  could  at  last  supply. 

All  the  way  down  in  the  train  that  spirit  of  tense  expectancy 
prevailed.  Andy  and  his  two  companions — Evans  and  Innis, 
a  writer  who  had  for  some  time  been  the  representative  in 
France  of  a  well-known  magazine — thought  it  could  be  read 
even  in  the  faces  of  old  farmers  as  they  looked  from  their 


VICTORIOUS  139 

•work  to  the  racing  engine,  in  the  eyes  of  muddy  pollus  crowd 
ing  the  way-stations.  It  was  evident  that,  overnight,  the  news 
had  somehow  spread;  on  the  lips  of  their  French  fellow- 
passengers  it  at  length  became  articulate: 

"Is  it  true  that  the  Americans  are  going  into  the  trenches 
at  last?" 

The  Americans  themselves  knew  it — the  soldiers  that  were 
first  to  be  moved  to  new  villages  and  then  marched  forward 
for  fifteen  miles  and  into  the  fighting-line.  By  the  time  of 
the  correspondents'  arrival  at  Neufchateau,  groups  of  these 
men  were  saying  good-by  to  the  comrades  that  they  were  to 
leave  behind  them  and  the  French  folk  among  whom  they  had 
lived.  What  most  struck  Andy  was  how  thoroughly  they  knew 
it.  There  was  no  brag  in  their  words,  and  yet  there  was  no 
weakness  in  their  hearts.  The  conversation  was  casual;  it 
broke  with  an  abrupt: 

"Well,  I  guess  I  gotta  be  getting  along.  Good-by /' 

In  the  muddy  street,  men  in  khaki  shook  hands  with  men  in 
khaki,  as  they  might  have  parted  a  year  since,  after  a  busi 
ness  trip  together.  An  American  soldier  would  clasp  an  old 
householder  on  the  shoulder,  or  bow  gravely  to  the  house 
holder's  wife.  Not  a  few  tossed  French  children  into  the  air, 
and  laughed  into  their  faces,  and  tried  to  say  ffAu  revoir" — 
and  hid  the  fact  that  they  were  thinking  of  other  children  in 
another  land  that  they  might  never  see  again. 

The  correspondents  looked  the  other  way.  They  hurried  to 
the  press-bureau. 

Here,  around  a  stove  in  the  center  of  the  room,  sat  three 
censors. 

"Now,  then,"  said  Innis,  "are  you  going  to  let  us  see  this 
show?" 

A  momentary  pause  succeeded  that  question.  The  officers 
looked  at  one  another,  embarrassed.  Then  they  let  fall  a  lit 
tle  hail-shower  of  apologies.  The  American  troops,  they  said, 
were  going  in  under  the  French,  and  the  French  commanding- 
general  would  not  allow  correspondents  to  accompany  them 
to  the  trenches. 

Evans  stormed;  Innis  argued;  Andy,  whom  these  gave  no 


140  VICTORIOUS 

chance  to  speak,  grew  redder  and  redder.  It  was  no  use: 
There  was  only  one  appeal.  The  correspondents  must  go  to 
Chaumont  and  lay  their  petition  before  Lieutenant-Colonel 
O'Malley,  chief  of  the  Military  Intelligence. 

"Fine  mess,  isn't  it?"  fumed  Evans.  "The  American  free 
press  under  the  control  of  a  bunch  of  detectives !" 

But,  as  Evans  put  it,  they  got  as  much  material  that  after 
noon  and  evening  for  their  newspapers  as  could  be  furnished 
next  day  were  the  limitations  of  the  censorship  to  remain  in 
force. 

ill 

It  was  a  calmly  smiling  O'Malley  that  received  them  in  his 
barnlike  quarters,  early  next  morning  after  their  cold  thirty- 
miles'  ride,  but  the  smiles  preceded  only  an  expression  of 
hopelessness.  It  was  granted  that  the  petition  asked  nothing 
save  justice,  but  it  was  reiterated  that,  though  an  effort  was 
being  made  to  arrange  matters,  the  Americans  were  going  in 
under  a  French  general  and  that  this  general's  will  must  be 
law. 

"But  this  is  history!"  pleaded  Innis. 

"I  know  it,"  the  chief  agreed. 

"Then,"  Evans  assumed,  "the  status  of  our  men  under  the 
French  is  to  be  precisely  that  of  the  Portuguese  under  the 
English?" 

He  repeated  a  story  to  the  effect  that  the  Portuguese  had 
recently  tried  a  raid  and  that  some  of  them  were  captured. 
Presently  the  captives  came  back  with  a  German  note  ad 
dressed  to  their  English  general :  "Thank  you,  but  when  we 
need  any  of  these,  we'll  come  and  take  them." 

It  was  clear  that  the  chief  of  the  Intelligence  Department 
did  not  like  the  comparison.  He  said  he  would  see  what  he 
could  do. 

After  tedious  hours  he  sent  for  them  to  say  that  the  French 
had  changed  their  minds :  the  American  newspaper-men  were 
to  have  a  sight  of  the  start  of  the  march  of  the  American 
troops  from  a  point  about  nine  miles  behind  their  destination  : 
more  might  not  be  asked. 


VICTOEIOUS  141 

"That  for  us,"  said  Innis  to  Evans,  as  the  party  left  the 
office — "to  you  and  me  that  were  in  trenches  and  under  fire 
before  the  censors  smelt  salt  water  east  of  Atlantic  City! 
What  do  you  know  about  it,  anyhow  ?" 

"I  know  this/'  Evans  answered :  "I'm  going  back  to  Paris 
to-night.  All  we  could  see  to-morrow'd  be  a  little  more  of 
what  we  saw  yesterday  at  Neufchateau.  I've  got  all  I  need  for 
my  story.  If  these  sap-heads  think  they  can  keep  me  down 
here  for  a  parade,  they're  mistaken,  that's  all.  Come  on  over 
to  the  station.  We'll  eat  there :  then,  if  you  fellows  want  to 
stay  and  be  suckers,  you  can  see  me  on  my  train  at  least." 

Andy  and  Innis  had  decided  to  remain  and  see  what  could 
be  seen  of  the  march-out.  Both  held  to  this  resolve  through 
dinner,  and  Innis  never  altered  it.  It  was  something  that 
happened  immediately  after  the  meal  which  changed  Andy: 
two  or  three  staff-officers  were  on  the  station-platform;  they 
said  they  were  arranging  for  a  special  car  to  be  attached  to 
the  Paris  train  and  to  carry  with  it  the  general  to  whom  Andy 
had  addressed  his  still  iinanswered  report. 

"Do  you  suppose,"  asked  Andy,  as  the  three  reporters 
walked  off :  "that  he  would  go  away  the  night  before  his  men 
went  into  action?" 

Evans  shrugged.  "You  heard  what  they  told  us,"  said  he. 
"He  might  have  some  conference  on  with  Petain." 

Swathed  in  their  raincoats,  they  paced  the  platform..  Pres 
ently,  in  a  shadowed  doorway,  Evans  detected  Garcia. 

"What  do  you  suppose  he's  skulking  around  here  for?" 
asked  Innis. 

"Keeping  an  eye  on  us,"  said  Evans.  "We'll  let  him  know 
we're  on  to  him  anyhow."  He  waved  to  Garcia  almost  de 
risively. 

Realizing  himself  observed,  the  lieutenant  beckoned : 

"Brown,  come  here  a  minute.  I  want  to  see  you." 

"More  trouble  for  you,  Andy,"  said  Evans. 

Andy  feared  so,  but  he  obeyed  the  summons.  Garcia,  led 
him  to  the  farthest  end  of  the  platform. 

"Going  back  to  Paris  ?"  he  began. 

"I  might,"  said  Andy,  cautiously  non-committal. 


142  VICTOKIOUS 

It  was  dark  on  the  platform,  save  at  such  spots  as  were  di 
rectly  tinder  the  few  electric-lights.  Garcia's  face  was  there 
fore  not  easily  read,,  but  there  was  a  snarl  in  his  voice  as,  with 
a  monosyllabic  command,  he  produced  from  his  pocket  several 
pieces  of  paper  and  thrust  them  toward  his  victim: 

"Here !" 

Andy  took  the  papers.    "What's  this  ?" 

"If  s  your  letter  to  the  general."  Garcia  gave  vent  to  a 
short  laugh.  "I  told  you  you  couldn't  go  over  our  heads.  You 
poor  boob,  you  didn't  think  you'd  get  an  answer,  did  you  ?" 

He  turned  on  his  heel.  A  moment  later,  he  was  lost  in  the 
night. 

Andy  walked  slowly  to  the  nearest  lamp  and  looked  at  the 
crumpled  sheets.  They  were  indeed  the  hard  results  of  his 
investigations :  somehow,  his  petition  must  have  got  no  farther 
than  the  headquarters  of  the  Military  Intelligence. 

IV 

There  was  one  more  chance.  The  general  would  be  aboard 
this  night-train  to  Paris.  Should  Andy  remain  and  see  the 
march-out,  or  take  the  train  and  see  the  general  in  person  ? 

The  choice  was  hard.  He  had  come  to  France  to  see 
America  in  the  war;  through  long  months,  which  darkened 
into  a  week's-long  night  of  despondency,  he  had  waited,  and 
now  the  event  was  at  hand.  He  was  at  the  age  when  the  ap 
peal  of  adventure  reaches  its  strongest,  and  when  adventure 
means  physical  action — at  the  age  when  it  is  hard  to  turn 
one's  back  on  marching  men.  He  ought  to  see  the  march-out 
for  his  papers'  sake.  He  could  see  the  general  some  other 
time:  he  could  try  to  see  the  general  when  that  personage 
came  to  the  station.  Perhaps  nothing  would  result  from  an 
interview  anyhow ;  Garcia  had  secured  the  letter :  why  not  let 
the  matter  end  there  ?  Andy  felt  himself  only  a  reporter,  and 
a  poor  one :  how  could  a  single  boy  hope  to  prevail  against  the 
will  of  vast  political  forces  and  the  workings  of  a  great  or 
ganization  the  powers  of  which  were  dictatorial  ?  Why  should 


VICTOKIOUS  143 

he  be  expected  to  attempt  what  none  of  his  companions  con 
templated  ? 

Yet  he  could  not  excuse  himself  from  the  task  to  which  he 
had  set  his  hand.  Now  that  it  appeared  his  letter  had  been 
intercepted,  to  see  the  general  was  more  important  than  to 
see  the  march-out.  Having  had  more  tastes  than  one  of  army- 
delays,  he  thought  that  no  formal  appointment  could  be  so 
favorable  as  this  chance  meeting.  He  could  not  reach  such  a 
personage  on  his  passage,  surrounded  by  servants,  across  the 
platform :  to  be  reached,  he  must  be  sought  on  the  train.  If 
nothing  came  of  it,  Andy  would  at  least  have  done  the  right 
thing.  That  he  was  one  against  many  could  not  lessen  the 
justice  of  his  cause  or  the  need  for  serving  it :  he  ought  to  go 
forward  precisely  because  nobody  else  was  going. 

He  thought  of  his  mother  and  of  Blunston  and,  most  of  all, 
of  Sylvia :  he  knew  what  they  would  counsel.  Never  doubting 
that  he  would  at  least,  as  a  bearer  of  War  Department  cre 
dentials,  be  given  an  interview,  he  realized  that  he  must  do 
all  that  one  man  could  for  the  good  of  his  country.  He  had 
a  healthy  dread  of  scenes,  but  he  saw  himself  going  to  the 
general  as  petitioners  broke  through  Roman  crowds  to  gain  the 
ear  of  Caesar,  heard  himself  argue  and  plead  and  explain — 
even  began  to  compose  and  learn  the  terms  of  his  appeal.  No 
man  has  done  his  duty  until  he  has  done  all  that  he  can  do : 
until  Andy  had  tried  to  see  the  general,  he  would  not  have 
tried  his  best  to  do  what  the  best  that  was  in  him  declared, 
with  unequivocal  voice,  to  be  right. 

"Evans,"  he  said  when  he  had  rejoined  his  companions  and 
parried  their  joking  questions  about  Garcia,  "I  guess  I'll — 
I'll  go  'long  with  you — and  see  him  on  the  way." 

"Him?"  said  Evans.    "Who?" 

"The  general.  I'll  see  him  about  that  letter  of  mine,  you 
know." 

Evans  said  he  would  be  glad  to  have  Andy's  company.  "But 
I  advise  you  to  keep  away  from  his  nibs,"  he  added. 

With  decision,  however,  Andy's  confidence  had  revived. 

Innis  readily  agreed  to  see  them  on  his  return  and  give 


144  VICTORIOUS 

them  any  details  of  the  march-out  of  which  their  immediate 
journey  might  deprive  them. 


On  the  train  to  Paris,  an  orderly  barred  Andy  from  the 
general's  car. 

"He  hasn't  got  no  time  to  talk  to  reporters,"  said  the  or 
derly. 

Andy  scribbled  a  note.  It  was  a  respectful,  hopeful,  young 
sort  of  note.  It  described  its  writer  as  the  holder  of  the  War 
Department  appointment  that  made  him  an  accredited  corre 
spondent,  recalled  his  letter  and  said  that  it  was  about  this 
that  Andy  wanted  to  speak. 

The  orderly  took  it  grumblingly  in.  He  was  gone  but  a  mo 
ment,  during  which,  however,  Andy  made  desperate  efforts  to 
recall  the  opening  words  of  his  speech. 

Then  the  orderly  came  back.    He  was  grinning: 

"The  general  says  he  needn't  see  you.  And  the  other  fellow 
says  your  letter  didn't  go  to  the  general  but  to  him,  and  was 
referred  to  the  press-division  for  action  .  .  " 

"What  did  I  tell  you?"  said  Evans. 


CHAPTER  IX 

OF  SARAH  BROWN,  AND  OF  A  YELLOW  LETTER  FOUND  IN  A  TRUNK 

MINNIE  did  not  write  to  Andy.  She  told  herself  that  she 
had  "turned  Andy  down";  when  she  passed  Sarah  Brown  on 
the  street,  she  always  inquired  for  him,  but  always  inquired 
commiseratingly.  Instead  of  being  pleased,  she  was  only 
piqued  by  the  occasional  postcards  that  he  sent  her. 

Sarah  found  herself  very  lonely,  in  spite  of  the  boarders 
now  established  in  her  house,  but  she  showed  to  the  world 
of  Americus  neither  her  loneliness  nor  the  pain  that  she  suf 
fered  when  inquiries  such  as  Minnie's  pricked  feelings  that 
none  knew  she  possessed. 

She  showed  nothing  except  a  sterner  face  and  a  little  more 
abstraction  in  the  management  of  her  house. 

There  were  several  letters  from  Andy  now.  She  began 
smolderingly  to  resent  that  stamp  "passed  by  Censor,"  which 
meant  that  her  boy's  messages  of  love  must  all  be  revealed  to 
an  army  officer  before  they  were  permitted  to  go  on  their  way 
to  the  eyes  for  which  they  had  been  written ;  but  she  was  un- 
feignedly  glad  to  get  them,  come  how  they  might. 

He  sent  money  home — Andy  could  not  afford  to  live  at  the 
camp,  but  there  had  never  been  a  time  when  he  could  not  help 
his  mother — and  urged  Sarah,  since  he  was  doing  better  than 
he  had  expected,  to  "fire  the  boarders" ;  but  Sarah  did  not  fol 
low  this  advice.  It  was  in  one  of  these  gift-bearing  missives 
that  there  appeared  this  paragraph : 

"Tell  Mr.  Blunston  (I  haven't  time  to  write  two  letters  to 
day)  that  nobody  will  ever  convert  the  French  people  to  any 
high-flown  ideas  about  raising  the  Boche  to  higher  things 
after  this  war,  or  by  means  of  this  war.  There  are  a  whole 
lot  of  things  about  all  sorts  of  conditions  that  ought  to  be 

145 


146  VICTORIOUS 

told,  but  won't  be  passed,  and  the  French  don't  see  how  any 
good  can  be  done  except  just  whipping  the  enemy.  They 
think  of  the  Germans  as  a  lot  of  criminals — some  must  be 
shot  and  the  rest  sent  to  jail  for  life.  Our  enlisted  men  are 
splendid — just  splendid.  There's  really  a  great  deal  more 
that  I'd  think  it  well  to  tell,  but  can't.  Show  Mr.  Blunston 
this  letter." 

Sarah  felt  that  here  was  a  strange  mission,  but  she  regarded 
its  execution  as  a  duty.  Blunston,  who  made  punctilious  calls, 
would  surely  come  to  see  her  within  a  few  days.  Nevertheless, 
she  decided  to  brave  calling  on  him  with  Andy's  letter.  She 
dressed  with  unusual  care,  but  made  amends  with  herself  by 
changing  back  from  a  becoming  to  an  unbecoming  hat. 

The  veteran  war-correspondent,  somewhat  relieved  of  his 
doubts  concerning  the  attitude  of  his  protege  toward  Minnie, 
had  never  regretted  his  sacrifice  and  had  been  delighted  with 
Andy's  story  of  the  grand  review,  suffering,  indeed,  pangs  of 
conscience  when  he  appended  his  own  name  to  it  and  sent  it 
forth  to  its  newspapers,  after  the  manner  in  which  he  sent  all 
of  Andy's  copy,  as  coming,  for  manifolding,  through  an  agent 
in  this  country.  He  amazedly  saw  Sarah  walk  up  the  flower- 
bordered  walk  to  the  old  house,  and  came  out  to  meet  her. 

"We  both  ought  to  be  proud  of  Andy,v  he  said  easily:  he 
felt  that  there  might  be  need  of  ease.  "He  is  doing  excellent 
work.  I  only  think  I  oughtn't  to  take  any  of  the  credit  for 
what  .  .  ." 

Sarah  showed  him  the  letter  and  indicated  the  mysterious 
paragraph.  Blunston  read  it  twice  over. 

"It  is,"  he  admitted,  "a  little  ...  But  probably  the  boy 
was  only  in  a  hurry.  He  wanted  you  to  bring  this  to  me  be 
cause  he  hadn't  time  .  .  .  You  see,  he  says  he  hadn't." 

In  his  heart  he  understood  that  Andy  was  beginning  to 
doubt,  or  would  soon  begin  to  doubt,  whether  all  was  well  with 
the  management  of  the  A.  E.  P.,  to  know  that  the  censorship 
would  not  pass  a  record  of  the  facts  giving  rise  to  any  such 
doubt,  and  to  have  taken  this  means  of  slipping  some  hint  of 
the  situation  under  censorial  eyes  prone  to  examine  only  the 
first  and  last  lines  of  paragraphs. 


VICTOKIOUS  147 

Were  there,  ahead  of  Andy,  troubles  that,  though  Blunston 
might  have  adumbrated  them,  he  had  never  really  foreseen? 
How,  if  there  were,  would  Andy  meet  them?  He  was,  after 
all,  only  an  inexperienced  lad.  Suppose  that  he  defied  them : 
how  could  he  win  his  way  through,  and  how,  if  he  could  not, 
could  Blunston  feel  that  he  had  done  Andy  aught  but  an  ill 
turn  through  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  ambitions  in  sending 
Andy  abroad  ?  Suppose — it  had  to  be  supposed — suppose  that 
Andy  succumbed:  then,  by  surrendering  his  post,  Blunston 
would  have  betrayed  his  journalistic  trust,  have  failed  in  his 
duty  to  the  public  that  had  a  right  to  information  which  might 
thus  be  suppressed. 

Blunston  himself  had  been  seriously  wondering  about  Wash 
ington's  conduct  of  the  war.  Andy's  message  left  him  won 
dering. 

II 

Sarah  was  a  little  uneasy.  She  felt  that,  though  the  cir 
cumstances  were  of  one  of  those  masculine  sorts  which  no 
woman  might  understand,  all  was  not  quite  well  with  her  son, 
and,  on  her  walk  home,  she  sought  refuge  from  the  vague  pres 
ent  in  the  certain  past. 

She  was  thinking,  as  she  crossed  her  threshold,  of  Andy's 
earliest  days.  It  was  time,  she  saw  by  the  hall-clock,  that  she 
begin  to  prepare  the  evening  meal  for  her  lodgers,  yet  she 
took  a  candle  and  climbed  to  the  attic  storeroom.  There  it 
was  that,  in  the  trunk  her  mother  had  packed  for  her  daugh 
ter's  wedding- journey,  Sarah  kept  a  pasteboard  box  bound 
with  faded  blue  ribbon  and  labeled,  in  the  girlish  hand  she 
had  forgotten :  "Andy's  first  short  dress." 

The  light  was  poor.  Her  fingers  fumbled  the  snow  of  dust ; 
the  key  that  she  half-blindly  selected  from  her  household 
bunch  grated  in  the  lock  to  which  she  applied  it.  Not  until 
she  had  lifted  the  resisting  lid  did  she  discover  that  she  had 
opened  the  wrong  receptacle  and  that  what  she  was  looking 
into  was  one  of  the  never  examined  trunks  which  previously 
belonged  to  her  father. 

It  was  full  of  letters  and  the  topmost  one  was  endorsed : 


148  VICTORIOUS 

"Wm.  R.  Bolingbroke  re  Tidd  house." 

Sarah  was  reading  it  before  she  became  aware  of  her  inten 
tion  to  do  so: 

".  .  .  and  you  have  been  entirely  too  kind  to  that  shift 
less  family,  letting  them  live  there  rent-free.  They  have 
shown  their  gratitude  by  calling  the  house  their  own,  and  if 
you  let  them  stay  much  longer  without  any  payment,  it  will 
become  theirs  by  what  our  law  calls  the  Right  of  Adverse  Pos 
session.  ...  I  can  tell  you  that  if  Tidd  doesn't  shake  a  leg 
and  pay  what  he  owes  me,  I  will  proceed  against  him.  .  .  ." 

The  writer,  she  knew,  was  Ralph's  father,  dead  these  many 
years.  Had  her  own  father,  then,  been  owner  of  the  house 
now  lent  to  the  Red  Cross  by  that  younger  Bolingbroke  whose 
wife  had  not  asked  Sarah  to  become  a  worker  there?  It 
would  have  been  characteristic  of  her  father's  careless  gen 
erosity  to  let  such  a  piece  of  property  slip  through  his  fingers, 
and  characteristic  of  his  pride  never  to  mention  its  loss;  it 
was  characteristic  of  her  father's  daughter  this  afternoon  to 
bear  no  resentment  because  of  her  deprivation  and  yet  to  find 
silent  satisfaction  in  the  knowledge  that  the  place  she  was 
barred  from  had  once  been  her  family's  own. 

She  turned  to  another  trunk.  She  found  the  pasteboard 
box  and  took  out  the  little  pale-blue  shoes  with  pearly  but 
tons.  Her  needle-roughened  fingers  smoothed  timidly  the  tiny 
lace  frock  that  lay  beside  them.  She  raised  a  bit  of  lace  frill 
ing  and  laid  it  against  her  sallow  cheek.  .  .  . 

in 

It  was  eleven  o'clock  the  next  morning  when  she  thought 
that  perhaps  Ralph  Bolingbroke  might  like  to  have  the  let 
ter:  it  was  useless  to  her,  but  he  might  care  for  it  because, 
antedating  the  common  use  of  typewriters,  it  was  in  his 
father's  hand.  So  again  she  put  on  her  rusty  best  and  went 
into  the  business-center  of  the  town. 


VICTOKIOUS  149 

Ralph  was  not  in  the  office  of  his  umbrella-factory;  his 
head-clerk  thought  his  employer  might  be  found  at  the  Red 
Cross  headquarters.  Thither  Sarah  proceeded. 

Only  Mrs.  Bolingbroke,  bursting  through  her  white  uniform, 
was  in  the  Tidd  house.  There  was  a  fire  in  the  grate  of  the 
big  workroom  and  into  this  the  pretty  young  chairman  of  the 
Americus  chapter  was  tossing,  by  handsful,  the  contents  of  a 
just-arrived  packing-box. 

She  was  raging.  She  had  ordered  Minnie  Taylor  to  be  here 
this  morning  and  do  some  expected  unpacking,  but  Minnie, 
afraid  even  to  telephone,  had  sent  word  by  a  boy  that  she  felt 
she  ought  to  go  into  Doncaster  to  see  the  moving-pictures  of 
Mr.  Gerard's  My  Four  Years  in  Germany :  Mrs.  Ralph  rapped 
the  unfortunate  messenger's  ears.  Then,  as  if  it  were  not 
enough  to  have  to  do  the  unpacking  herself,  this  box  sent 
in  by  the  Juneville  branch,  and  supposed  to  contain  many- 
tailed  bandages,  had  been  labeled,  by  some  impudent  person 
who  should  surfer  for  it,  "Freak  Bandages,"  and  contained 
swathings  with  odd  numbers  of  tails.  It  was  these  that  Mrs. 
Bolingbroke  was  flinging  to  the  flames  when  Sarah  entered. 

For  quite  a  second  the  caller  stood  unnoticed  in  the  door 
way.  Then  she  uttered  a  conventional  cough. 

Mrs.  Ralph  looked  up.  "Well,  Sarah,"  she  said,  "what  do 
you  want?" 

At  this  use  of  her  Christian  name  by  a  woman  so  much 
younger  than  herself,  who,  besides,  scarcely  knew  her,  Sarah's 
frame  stiffened. 

"I  was  looking  for  your  husband,  Mrs.  Bolingbroke,"  she 
said.  "They  told  me— " 

"Well,  he's  not  here.  Look  at  these  bandages:  they're  all 
wrong.  Come  on  and  get  busy  and  help  me  burn  them  up." 

It  was,  Sarah  reflected,  only  Mrs.  Ralph's  way  of  speaking. 
She  stooped  to  help  and  in  so  doing  laid  the  letter  on  the  floor 
beside  her. 

"What's  that?"  asked  Mrs.  Ralph. 

"It's  a  letter  I  wanted  to  show  your  husband." 

Mrs.  Bolingbroke  picked  it  up.    "I'll  do  just  as  well,"  she 


150  VICTORIOUS 

said :  "I  don't  allow  Ralph  to  have  any  secrets  from  me."  She 
read  it.  Instantly  she  was  on  her  feet.  "What's  all  this 
about  ?"  she  demanded. 

Sarah  rose  more  slowly,  but  she  rose.  "It's  just  a  letter 
that  I  thought—" 

"That  you  thought  you  could  threaten  my  husband  with  ?" 
Mrs.  Ralph's  face  was  blazing.  "A  letter  you  thought'd  make 
you  out  the  owner  of  this  house  ?  What  do  you  think  we  are, 
anyway  ?" 

"Mrs.  Bolingbroke,"  began  the  dumfounded  Sarah,  "how 
can  you  suppose — " 

With  a  swift  movement,  the  infuriated  Mrs.  Ralph  flung 
the  letter  upon  the  fire,  where  it  leaped  into  instant  flame. 

"There!"  she  shrieked.  "That's  how  much  I  care  about 
your  old  letter.  Now,  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it  ?  Tell 
it  if  you  dare,  and  I'll  say  there  never  was  such  a  letter,  and 
we'll  see  whose  word  they'll  take !" 

Sarah  made  no  reply.  She  turned  her  back  on  the  still 
raging  Mrs.  Ralph  and  left  the  Tidd  house. 


CHAPTEE  X 

HATS  OFF:  THE  FLAG! 

THE  nineteenth  of  January,  1918,  is  a  date  that  America 
will  remember,  for  it  is  a  date  on  which  American  history 
was  made. 

For  some  time  the  hint  of  what  was  coming  had  run  back 
and  forth  through  the  camp  with  waxing  imperativeness.  That 
camp  had  always  been  a  maneuver-field  for  rumors,  but  those 
other  rumors  were  generally  short-lived,  whereas  this  contin 
ued  and  grew.  There  were  chance  words  that  filtered  down 
ward  from  general  and  divisional  headquarters,  which  could 
mean  but  one  thing;  there  were  preparations,  premonitory 
movements  of  supply-trains  and  a  gathering-together  of  im 
pedimenta,  which  could  have  only  a  single  significance.  From 
the  farthest  huddle  of  damp  huts  on  a  sodden  hillside  to  the 
last  leaking  loft  in  the  last  muddy  village,  the  word  passed 
among  the  enlisted  men.  They  were  shivering;  they  knew, 
as  well  as  their  no  less  neglected  line-officers,  what  had  hap 
pened  to  their  uncertain  training;  yet,  with  the  increasing 
assurance  that  they  were  finally  to  fight,  eyes  brightened, 
hope  was  renewed  and  that  unflinching  purpose  on  whose 
wings  they  had  come  to  France  blotted  out  the  memory  of 
every  error  of  which  they  were  the  victims. 

Early  on  the  evening  of  the  eighteenth,  Chrissly  found 
Leonie  waiting  for  him  in  the  shadow  of  the  inn-yard's  bulg 
ing  wall.  Excitement  burned  in  his  brown  eyes  and  made  hie 
ruddy  cheeks  more  ruddy;  it  partially  stunned  his  recently 
acquired  French. 

"There  is — I  have  a  minute  only — there  is  a  thing  that  it 
is  necessary — to  say  to  you,"  he  began. 

Nobody  was  near;  the  cobbled  yard,  surrounded  with  its 
tiled  and  mossy  buildings,  was,  save  for  this  man  and  woman, 

151 


153  VICTOKIOUS 

empty.  In  the  last  pale  light  of  the  winter's  day,  he  devoured 
with  hungry  gaze  her  sinuous  form;  he  saw  her  level  eyes, 
but  noted,  too,  the  rapid  rise  and  fall  of  her  breasts  that 
marked  a  breathing  she  could  not  control. 

"I  know  it/'  she  said :  "to-morrow  you  go  to  fight ;  this  time 
it  is  final/' 

He  nodded.    "Our  outfit's  sure  to  go." 

"And  you,"  she  asked:  "you  want  it?" 

"Last  year/'  said  he,  "I  did  not  think  that  I  should  ever  be 
glad  to  fight." 

"But  now  you  are  glad,  hein?" 

"I  am  glad,  Leonie." 

A  glint  of  mischief  had  remained  in  her.  As  it  now  leaped 
forth,  it  bent  her  red  lips  into  a  smile. 

"Glad  to  leave  your  French  friends  that  are  here,  is  it  not  ?" 

"No,  no !"  Chrissly's  hands  wanted  to  go  out  toward  her ; 
he  had  to  clench  them  at  his  sides.  "My  friends  here — they 
are  the  one  thing  that  makes  me  want  to  stay." 

"More  than  does  that  Madame  Chrissly  in  the  United 
States?" 

His  hands  darted  toward  her,  then  were  stiffened  again, 
with  an  effort,  at  his  sides.  "Please!"  he  begged.  "I  want 
to  tell  you—" 

She  had  hurt  him;  she  saw  that.  The  smile  disappeared, 
and,  in  its  stead,  her  face  was  illuminated  by  a  wonderful 
tenderness.  She  reached  out  and  took  his  tight  hands;  her 
cold  fingers  uncoiled  his,  which  were  burning.  When  she  had 
opened,  she  clasped  them. 

"You  are  my  friend,"  she  said;  "all  Americans  are  the 
friends  of  France,  but  of  me  you  especially  are  my  honest 
friend,  and  I  am  yours.  Friends  must  not  question  each 
other,  and  they  will  not  listen  to  explanations." 

"But,  Leonie — "  He  was  possessed  by  the  idea  that  he 
ought  to  tell  her  about  Minnie  Taylor. 

She  released  one  of  his  hands  and  commanded  silence  by 
putting  pink  fingers  on  his  mouth. 

"It  is  enough,"  she  said,  "that  we  are  friends."  Confusion 
lowered  his  glance,  and  so  he  could  not  see  the  high  sorrow 


VICTOKIOUS  153 

that  was  in  her  steady  gaze.  "That  is  enough,"  she  continued. 
— Somewhere  a  bugle  sounded  through  the  raw  twilight. — 
"Go,"  she  concluded,  "and  fight  for  France." 

Before  he  could  answer  her,  she  had  disappeared. 


It  happened  as  he  had  said.  Next  morning  he  was  march 
ing,  and  half  the  soldiers  of  the  wide-flung  camp. 

To  see  those  villages  and  the  folk  in  them  was  to  see  a 
poignant  demonstration  of  what,  in  that  crisis,  her  western 
sister  meant  to  France.  As  Chrissly's  regiment  swung  out  of 
the  hamlet  in  which  it  had  been  billeted,  the  people — they 
were  only  old  men  and  children  and  women — packed  the  nar 
row  sidewalks  in  a  solid  mass  from  curb  to  cottage-walls. 
Long  crepe  veils  there  were,  which  mourned  relatives  or  lovers 
sacrificed  to  the  common  cause.  In  timid  hands,  little  boys  and 
girls  waved  tiny  American  flags.  Back  of  them  were  time- 
twisted  gaffers,  their  gnarled  fists  shaking  their  hats  high  in 
air;  their  faces  were  transfigured  as  by  youth  miraculously 
returned.  Housewives  and  young  girls,  some  bare  to  the 
weather,  others  with  only  shawls  or  knitted  black  capes  about 
their  fragile  shoulders,  raised  tremulous  fingers  that  would 
shut  out  a  picture  recalling  the  memory  of  those  marches 
from  which  their  own  menfolk  had  never  returned;  yet  the 
fingers  paused  before  their  hearts,  and  their  eyes,  through  a 
haze  of  tears,  glowed  with  exultation.  There  was  not  a  closed 
mouth  in  all  the  tossing  crowd :  their  voices — the  piping  treble, 
the  broken  bass,  the  sobbing  soprano — merged  in  a  continuous 
cheer. 

Chrissly  tried  to  obey  orders  and  walk  with  eyes  front, 
but  he  did  not  succeed.  As  the  regiment  swung  rhythmically 
up  the  street,  he  looked  from  side  to  side.  He  was  looking 
for  Leonie. 

She  was  not  in  the  laughing  group  at  the  entrance  to  the 
inn,  but  he  said  to  himself  that  she  would  be  beside  the  inn- 
yard  gate. 

She  was  not  at  the  gate,  and  his  heart  failed  him. 


154  VICTORIOUS 

Then,  a  hundred  yards  farther  on,  he  saw  her. 

She  had  sought  a  place  alone.  She  was  the  last -of  the 
crowd,  standing  at  the  door  of  a  deserted  house.  She  stood 
erect,  with  her  splendid  head  high:  he  could  see  the  straight 
line  of  her  tawny  throat  above  her  short  cape,  her  firm  chin. 
Her  lips  had  the  smile  of  yesterday,  and,  though  her  face  was 
pale,  in  her  eyes  shone  triumph. 

She  waved  her  hand.  .  .  .  He  had  a  quick  flash  of  her 
whole  figure,  full-bodied  and  well-corseted,  the  black  apron 
over  her  short  skirt,  the  slightly  reddened  hands,  the  deep  color 
in  her  mobile  face,  the  thick  coils  of  her  black  hair  neatly  piled 
high  and  held  with  large  shell  pins,  her  luminous  eyes  shining 
with  sorrow :  was  the  sorrow  for  him  or  for  France  ? 

She  was  gone.     The  relentless  march  had  left  her  behind. 

But  he  knew  now  what  her  heart  was  saying.    It  was  saying : 

"Somehow — for  whatever  reason  you  came  here  and  whoever 
else  may  elsewhere  claim  you — you  are  marching  for  me !" 

in 

It  was  a  gray  land  on  a  gray  day.  The  barren  fields 
stretched  eastward  under  a  bleak  and  humid  sky.  From  out 
that  way,  fighting  through  the  dense  atmosphere,  came  now 
the  rumble  of  the  endless  battles'  guns.  Behind  the  soldiers 
the  road  ran  straight  and  slushy  between  its  miles  of  poplars ; 
forward,  it  entered  the  very  gates  of  death. 

Gun-carriages  crawled  along,  the  steel  tubes  of  the  field- 
artillery  dull  in  the  scanty  light,  the  wheels  heavy  with  clog 
ging  masses  of  blue  clay,  the  wagon-tongues  creaking,  the 
mules  straining,  the  drivers  cracking  whips  and  curses.  The 
infantry,  at  route-step,  marched  with  feet  mud-shod,  their 
American  faces  at  odd  variance  with  their  English  helmets, 
the  steam  rising  in  clouds  from  their  soaking  uniforms. 

Whenever  they  passed  through  a  village,  cottagers  crowded 
about  them.  These  later  villages  were  in  partial  ruin;  they 
had  been  under  fire:  the  old  men  cheered  and  stamped  their 
wooden  shoes,  the  women  seized  the  soldiers'  hands ;  girls  ran 
out  to  embrace  them ;  children  brought  them  bunches  of  ever- 


VICTOKIOUS  155 

greens ;  babies  in  arms  were  held  up  for  a  kiss ;  what  remnants 
of  food  were  left  these  people,  these  they  pressed  upon  the 
passing  men. 

At  every  halt  the  soldiers  showed  their  nationality.  It  was 
evident  in  their  ready  laughter,  in  the  ingenuity  with  which 
they  found  the  best  modes  of  resting  themselves  against  the 
efforts  they  were  eager  to  renew;  it  was  most  evident  in  the 
leanness  and  keenness  of  their  youth,  in  the  high  cheek-bones 
that  predominated,  and  in  the  tight  American  mouth,  at  once 
humorous  and  brave.  Here,  as  back  there,  was  no  bragging 
when  they  came  to  pause,  no  rude  assurance:  only  a  very  cer 
tain,  though  very  quiet  determination.  They  talked  to  one 
another  and  rolled  cigarettes,  just  as  their  doubles  used  to 
do  at  home  before  a  sham-battle  at  a  National  Guard  en 
campment. 

In  every  village  the  world  over  there  are  loose  women;  in 
every  regiment  of  every  army  there  are  blackguards ;  but  here 
and  now,  in  these  villages  and  in  these  regiments,  the  civilians 
that  were  grateful  were  simply  grateful,  and  the  young  sol 
diers  that  looked  like  tattered  heroes  behaved  like  gentlemen. 

iy 

For  a  long  time,  Chrissly's  head  was  too  full  of  thoughts  for 
any  one  to  develop.  He  thought  of  his  short,  previous  endur 
ance  of  the  trenches;  of  the  farm  at  home  and  how  pleasant 
it  would  be  to  be  there ;  of  his  father  and  mother — a  thought 
that  he  tried  not  to  dwell  on;  of  Minnie  Taylor — a  thought 
that  he  endeavored  to  expel;  he  thought  of  the  religion  in 
which  he  had  been  reared,  and  how  it  taught  that  any  war 
was  a  work  of  the  devil;  he  thought  of  the  great  cause  now 
at  stake  and  the  sacrifice  that,  if  necessary,  he  would  make 
for  it,  and  he  thought  a  good  deal  more  than  he  thought 
right  of  Leonie.  There  was  not  much  order  to  his  thoughts, 
but  they  served  to  barricade  him  against  the  comments  of  the 
veteran  again  marching  beside  him,  of  whom  he  had  grown 
weary. 

At  the  rests,  on  that  latter  day,  he  learned  things  about  the 


156  VICTORIOUS 

men  of  his  company  that  he  had  never,  even  on  their  trial- 
trip  to  the  trenches,  heard  from  them  before.  In  a  quiet  way, 
they  became  more  talkative  than  the  intimacies  of  the  camp 
and  that  shock  of  their  first  brief  trench-experience  had  made 
them.  Their  feet  were  on  the  ultimate  threshold,  and  they 
spoke,  without  regret  it  is  true,  but  with  a  new  freedom,  of 
things  concerning  which  they  had  been  silent. 

Here  was  a  lad  that  had  been  working  his  way  through 
Harvard,  starving  himself  in  a  garret,  waiting  on  table  in  a 
students'  boarding-house,  because  he  wanted  to  be  a  teacher ; 
the  brutal  fist  of  Berlin  had  descended,  its  fingers  uncoiled 
and  then  closed  upon  American  prerogatives,  and  the  boy  for 
ever  forewent  his  dream,  put  aside  his  ambitions,  sacrificed 
what  he  had  sacrificed  so  much  to  gain — and  volunteered. 
His  frugal  life,  his  years  of  self-denial,  even  his  conscious 
meannesses  and  skimpings — they  seemed  to  Chrissly's  slow 
eyes  to  form  a  visible  halo  about  him;  and  yet  it  was  a  halo 
of  which  he  stood  in  patient  ignorance.  Chrissly  regarded 
him  now  with  a  sort  of  awe;  why,  he  called  the  Harvard  lad 
"Dickie,"  and  there  was  no  difference  between  them! 

There*  was  an  older  man,  the  husband  of  a  wife,  the  father 
of  a  family  in  New  Jersey.  He  had  closed  up  a  business  that 
he  had  just  succeeded  in  clearing  from  debt— closed  it  because 
he  knew  his  country  needed  him.  Somehow,  in  spite  of  all 
that  Chrissly  knew  to  the  contrary,  he  felt  as  if  the  virtue  of 
what  this  older  man  had  done,  and  the  love  of  those  he  had 
left  at  home,  must  surely  now  go  forward  with  him  and  form 
about  him  a  bullet-proof  network — must  do  so,  or  else  there 
was  no  justice  in  the  eternal  scheme. 

There  was  every  type  that  was  to  be  seen  back  home  in 
Americus.  Chrissly  heard  a  boy  that  looked  like  the  youthful 
Baptist  tell,  without  bitterness,  a  story: 

"They  say  a  fellow  that  came  out  here  in  the  commissary 
department  as  a  major,  got  sick  and  went  to  a  Paris  specialist. 
The  specialist  said: 

"  Tour  brain  needs  cleaning.  It  needs  a  regular  house- 
cleaning,  and  that'll  take  two  weeks.' 

"So  the  doctor  took  out  the  man's  brain  and  scrubbed  it 


VICTORIOUS  157 

and  oiled  it  and  got  it  goin'  fine.  And  then  he  went  after 
his  patient  and  found  him  down  here  at  camp. 

"  'Here's  your  brain/  said  the  specialist.  'I've  got  it  all 
fixed  up  fine  for  you  now,  and  it'll  work  just  right.' 

"But  the  owner  of  that  brain,  he  just  gave  one  look  at  it, 
and  he  says: 

"'Oh,  that!'  he  says.  'I  don't  need  that;  you  see,  I'm  a 
general  now/  " 

He  laughed  at  his  own  joke,  this  boy,  and  he  nudged  his 
companions ;  but  Chrissly  wondered  how  he  could  laugh — now. 
Out  there,  just  a  few  miles  away,  across  the  lines,  there 
might,  at  this  instant,  be  waiting,  in  some  soldier's  belt,  a 
steel-tipped  bullet  that  was  destined — perhaps  a  week  hence, 
perhaps  to-night — to  find  its  way  into  this  lad's  heart.  .  .  . 

Among  all  his  comrades  Chrissly  heard  only  one  that  com 
plained,  and  his  was  a  complaint  not  for  the  speaker's  own 
sake,  but  for  his  country's  honor.  It  came  from  a  man  in 
whose  dark  hair  there  were  already  streaks  of  gray,  a  solid 
man,  clearly,;  in  civil  life,  a  man  of  slow  but  sure  mental 
processes. 

"Well,"  he  said,  as  he  looked  at  such  of  his  fellows  as  were 
visible,  "there  aren't  many  of  us.  After  we've  been  at  war  for 
nine  months,  we've  got  this  many  ready  for  fighting.  I  call 
it  a  pretty  cheesy  effort." 

"I  know  I'll  get  mine,"  another  man  contended.  "It's  out 
there  somewhere."  He  nodded  toward  the  darkening  east, 
whence  came  a  rumble  of  unseen  guns.  "I  know  I'll  get  mine, 
but  I  don't  care,  so  long  as  I  get  it  right  an'  ain't  just  a 
cripple." 

He  was  an  unemotional  man,  but  the  moment  was  one  for 
confidences. 

"You  see,"  he  presently  added,  "there's  a  girl  back  there  in 
Bellows'  Falls.  She  said  I  wasn't  any  good.  I  want  to  be 
some  good — and  I  just  want  her  to  know  I  was,  after  all." 


Momentarily,    during   the   last   hours    of   waiting,    there 
waxed  in  Chrissly,  and  no  doubt  in  all,  the  horror  of  conjee- 


158  VICTOEIOUS 

tnre  as  to  the  fate  before  them.  Once  a  white-haired  villager, 
who  must  have  remembered  1870,  looked  at  them  and  mur 
mured  "Mes  pauvres  enfants"  and  shook  his  head. 

"What's  that  guy  callin'  us  ?"  asked  Chrissly's  nearest  neigh 
bor. 

Chrissly  was  prompt :  "He's  sayin'  we're  brave  a'ready." 

yi 

Sturdy  boys  with  resolute  faces;  mature  men  who  had 
shut  up  shop  to  come  here:  here  they  were,  their  idealism 
rekindled,  their  purpose  reinvigorated,  because  they  were  at 
length  to  have  the  chance  to  fight. 

The  January  darkness  grew  suddenly  deeper.  The  bugles 
sounded.  The  men  approached  their  destined  positions.  A 
moment  later  and  there  came,  from  two  directions,  the  ad 
jutant's  call. 

A  great  anger  rose  to  Chrissly's  once  rural  brain:  anger 
against  a  sham  civilization  that  permitted  a  Prussian  mili 
tarism  and  made  possible  this  slaughter  called  war.  What  was 
this  poor  bank-clerk  from  St.  Louis  to  the  kaiser?  Why 
should  a  von  Hindenburg  demand  the  life  of  that  truckman 
from  the  Boston  docks  ?  What  part  in  the  Welte  politik  could 
yonder  puddler  from  Pittsburg  possibly  play  ? 

Somehow  he  could  not  help  detaching  his  own  thoughts  from 
himself  to  dwell  on  those  of  his  comrades.  He  knew  whither, 
tnrough  the  glow  of  the  winter  twilight,  their  thoughts  had 
gone.  They  had  gone  to  mothers,  wives  and  sweethearts  in 
quiet  American  towns,  to  American  homesteads  and  American 
ways,  to  the  great,  bungling,  busy,  loving,  erratic  chaos  that 
we  cherish  and  will  die  for  and  that  we  call  the  United  States 
of  America.  .  .  . 

Again  the  bugle  shrilled  into  the  dark. 

"Fall  in!" 

They  were  already  there — the  double  lines  of  them,  the 
long  narrow  packs  on  their  backs,  two  lines  of  them  rising 
out  of  the  night  and  passing  into  it  again. 

"Eight  dress — right  dress — right  dress  !" 


VICTORIOUS  159 

The  order  passed  along.  The  men  shuffled  in  the  mud,  the 
lines  straightened,  stiffened,  the  soldiers  stood  erect  and  still. 

"Front  I" 

Well,  for  them  and  him,  it  had  come  to  this.  All  their 
love  and  longing,  all  their  business  deals  and  drudgery  and 
economies — all  their  hopes  and  fears  had  come  to  this  night 
in  France,  to  the  mud,  the  wet  and  the  cold — and  the  trenches, 
and  not  a  man  of  them  was  visibly  sorry. 

It  was  ghastly;  it  was  horrible.  But  it  was  heroic,  and  it 
was  splendid. 

"Beport !" 

Corporal  after  corporal  responded  for  his  squad.  Every 
soldier  was  present  or  accounted  for. 

There  came  a  horrid  pause. 

Then,  far  up  the  line,  an  indistinguishable  order  sounded. 
It  was  repeated  a  little  nearer  at  hand.  It  was  repeated  still 
nearer.  It  came  to  Chrissly's  own  company,  clear  at  last 
and  challenging.  Then  it  passed  on  in  echoes  down  the  ranks 
until  it  was  engorged  by  the  night : 

"Squads  right — march !" 

Their  rifles  went  to  their  shoulders.  They  turned — by  rows 
of  four  they  turned — and  swung  off  eastward  toward  those 
distant  growling  guns — swung  off  on  their  way  to  fight. 

yn 

Innis  and  a  little  group  of  correspondents  stood  there 
watching  them  —  squad  after  squad,  platoon  after  platoon, 
company  after  company — until  these,  too,  like  the  order  that 
started  them,  had  been  swallowed  by  the  dark. 

The  newspaper-men  thought  of  what  they  had  seen  in  Flan 
ders  and  upon  the  Somme;  they  thought  of  all  the  incompe 
tence  and  brutality  of  war. 

Away  over  there  in  America,  across  the  night-swathed  sea, 
in  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  houses,  houses  rich  and  houses 
poor,  old  women  and  young  were  dreading  this  moment  and 
praying  for  those  men  who  had  just  now  passed  by.  Did 
they  know  that  the  hour  had  come,  these  women  ?  Did  some 


160  VICTORIOUS 

mental  current  bring  them  the  message  over  the  trackless 
leagues  ? 

Here,  in  a  cottage  kitchen,  a  French  woman  was  singing  at 
her  work.  Some  one  said  that  of  her  four  sons  three  had 
been  killed  in  this  war  and  the  fourth  driven  mad.  It  was  to 
be  wondered  how  such  a  woman  could  sing — how  any  woman 
could  sing  now.  And  then  there  came  clearly  the  words  of 
her  plaintive  refrain : 

"La  guer-re, 
C'est  la  miser-e!" 

The  song  ceased.  There  was  no  longer  any  sound  of  march 
ing  men.  The  place  knew  them  no  more. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HOW  POLITICIANS  CAN  EAT  THEIR  CAKE  AND  HAVB  IT 


said  McGregor,  "I'm  as  comfortable  as  a  man 
can  be  in  a  European  hotel.  I  struck  a  sort  of  deputy-manager 
here  that  used  to  work  at  the  Annex  :  he  learned  a  lot  there, 
and  he's  open  to  instruction." 

McGregor  looked  very  comfortable  indeed.  The  vast  pink- 
and-gilt  parlor  of  his  suite,  which  he  used  as  a  sitting-room, 
warmly  overlooked  a  chill  Place  Vendome  and  was  all  the 
more  pleasant  because  of  the  contrast  with  its  prospect.  His 
armchair,  stuffed  with  cushions,  was  drawn  beside  a  window, 
and  at  his  elbow  was  a  table  laden  with  the  morning's  papers, 
scarcely  ten  days  old,  from  America.  McGregor  was  in  slip 
pers  and  his  flowered-silk  dressing-gown,  it  being  not  yet 
noon;  the  sleeves  of  the  dressing-gown  reached  to  his  knuck 
les,  and  its  open  collar  climbed,  on  each  side,  almost  to  his 
pouched  eyes. 

Andy,  pale  and  nervous,  sat  uneasily  opposite.  From  the 
cigar  that  McGregor  had  given  him  by  way  of  welcome,  he 
was  trying  to  flick  ashes  more  rapidly  than  they  accumulated. 

Although  a  telegram  at  his  rooms  had  informed  him  of 
Sylvia's  brief  return  to  Paris,  the  boy  came  first  to  the  Ritz. 
There  was  still  duty  to  be  done,  still  one  more  assurance  to 
make  doubly  sure  :  he  meant  to  act  frankly  and  directly,  but 
he  found  it  exceedingly  hard  to  dislike  his  sybaritic  acquaint 
ance,  and  harder  still  to  expose  the  suspicions  that  should 
have  made  dislike  imperative.  Therefore,  he  had  begun  his 
conversation  by  asking  McGregor  a  wholly  unnecessary  ques 
tion  as  to  how  he  fared. 

"You  look  as  if  things  were  pretty  easy,"  said  Andy. 

"Thanks  again,"  said  McGregor.  His  little  eyes  regarded 
his  caller  reflectively.  "That  pretty  Miss  Raeburn's  back,"  he 
added. 

161 


162  VICTORIOUS 

Andy  blushed.  "So  I  hear/' 

"Yes,"  McGregor  resumed.  "I  had  a  pleasant  talk  with  her 
yesterday.  Met  her  near  your  press-headquarters. — You  don't 
mind,  do  you?" 

Andy  flicked  at  his  cigar.  "Me  ?  Why,  no.  Why  should  I  ?" 

"I  dunno,"  eaid  McGregor.  "I  just  thought  you  might, 
that's  all.  I  rather  like  the  little  lady.  You  see,  I'm  a  lonely 
kind  of  a  fellow,  especially  in  Paris,  my  son.  What  have  you 
been  doing?" 

"I've  been  down  at  the  camp.   We're  in,  you  know." 

"Yes,"  said  McGregor.  He  puffed  two  slow  columns  of 
smoke. 

"They  wouldn't  let  us  see  anything  but  the  march-out." 
There  was  annoyance  in  the  tone. 

"Oh,  well,  I  wouldn't  worry.    They  know  their  business." 

And/s  whole  face  was  on  fire.  "That's  just  what  I'm  not 
so  sure  of." 

"I  guess  they  don't  want  anything  printed,"  said  McGregor. 
His  eyes  never  left  Andy's  face. 

"'Why  don't  they?"  challenged  Andy. 

"Well,  they  don't  want  the  Germans  tipped  off." 

"It's  not  that.  One  side  always  knows  these  things  as  well 
as  another."  Andy  took  a  great  breath.  "My  last  trip  down 
there,  I  looked  into  conditions  pretty  carefully.  Let  me  tell 
you  what  I  saw." 

He  told  it  all — up  to  his  visit  to  the  aviation  centers.  He 
piled  fact  on  damning  fact,  McGregor  watching  him  the  while 
without  blinking. 

"That's  what's  been  going  on  at  the  camp  and  back  home," 
Andy  concluded:  "waste.  We've  wasted  time  and  money. 
Now,  if  we're  not  careful,  we're  going  to  waste  lives." 

"Well,"  said  McGregor,  "this  is  war,  my  son." 

"Then  all  the  more  reason  why  we  shouldn't  be  wasteful. 
If  we're  going  to  throw  everything  away,  we'll  be  whipped." 

McGregor  lit  a  fresh  cigar  from  its  unfinished  predecessor. 
When  he  now  spoke,  it  was  from  behind  a  gray  cloud : 

"Everything's  wasteful,  if  you  look  at  it  one  way.  They 
say  Nature  isn't,  but  just  look  at  the  way  she  made  the  ele- 


VICTOBIOUS  163 

pliant:  practically  two  tails  and  yet  a  skin  so  thick  it  can't 
feel  the  flies." 

"I — "  Andy  gripped  the  arms  of  his  chair.  "I  was  at  Tours 
and  Issoudun,  too,"  he  said. 

The  smoke-cloud  grew  thicker.   McGregor  did  not  answer. 

"The  aviation  centers,"  said  Andy.  He  was  pale  again,  now. 

Still  McGregor  did  not  reply. 

"You  said  you  were  interested  in  aviation  contracts,  didn't 
you?"  asked  Andy. 

"This  cigar  don't  draw,"  McGregor's  high  voice  complained. 
He  bent  to  examine  the  mischief.  "Yes,  I'm  interested  in 
aviation.  But  I'm  not  actively  looking  for  work,  if  that's  what 
you  mean.  You  know  what  the  tramp  said  when  the  lady 
asked  him  if  he  was  looking  for  work :  he  said, ' Oh,  it's  not  so 
bad  as  that ;  I'm  just  wmtin'  for  it.' " 

He  chuckled.  To  Andy's  suspicious  ears,  the  chuckle  did 
not  ring  clear.  An  anger  seized  the  boy. 

He  spoke  of  American  flesh  and  blood  at  that  moment  the 
more  exposed  to  German  shells  and  gas  because  the  Americans 
had  no  aeroplanes  to  drive  away  the  scouting  planes  of  the 
enemy.  He  asked  how  long,  by  our  aircraft's  inactivity,  we, 
the  richest  and  least  hampered  of  the  warring  nations,  were 
to  continue  adding  to  the  heartbreaking  load  of  our  Allies. 
He  forgot  his  embarrassment  and  his  inveterate  liking  for  the 
man  before  him,  and  demanded  a  knowledge  of  what  had  been 
done  with  the  $640,000,000  appropriated  for  aerial  work. 

"Half  the  casualties  that  happen  in  the  Toul  sector  will  be 
due  to  the  fact  that  we  haven't  got  a  plane  of  our  own.  Any 
body  that's  seen  a  little  bit  of  this  war  knows  that,"  he  de 
clared.  "And  anybody  that  knows  how  things  are  over  here, 
knows  there's  been  failure,  somewhere — and  probably  dishon 
esty." 

McGregor's  eyes  were  again  on  duty.  They  watched  Andy 
firmly  through  all  that  he  said. 

"Well — my  son,"  the  contractor  asked,  when  Andy  had 
made  an  end,  "supposing  all  this  is  true,  what  are  you  going 
to  do  about  it?" 

"I'm  going  to  get  it  home,  and  get  it  printed." 


164  VICTORIOUS 

McGregor  gestured  with  a  plump  hand  toward  a  japanned 
humidor  on  the  table.  "Your  cigar's  out;  have  another/' 

The  cigar  in  Andy's  fingers  was  not  only  extinguished;  it 
was  broken.  "No,  thanks,"  he  said:  "not  now/' 

McGregor  settled  himself  more  deeply  in  the  cushions.  His 
face  became  as  concerned  as  it  was  possible  for  such  a  face  to 
become. 

"I  wouldn't  try  to  print  all  this  stuff,"  he  said.  "Honest,  I 
wouldn't  try  it,  Brown." 

Andy's  anger  had  expended  itself  in  utterance,  and,  though 
his  purpose  was  fixed,  his  incongruous  liking  for  McGregor 
returned  to  conscious  force. 

"Why  not?"  he  asked. 

"Well,  in  the  first  place,  if  the  M.  I.  got  wind  of  it,  they 
wouldn't  let  the  papers  print  it,  and  if  the  papers  did  print 
it,  it  wouldn't  ever  get  over  here  anyhow :  they'd  just  stop  the 
papers  in  the  mails." 

"It  isn't  getting  the  thing  over  here  I  care  about,"  said 
Andy. 

"I  thought  you  might  be  wanting  to  please  somebody  in 
the  French  government." 

"I  guess  the  French  government  knows  all  about  it  already 
and  is  sick  enough  over  it.  Haven't  we  been  trying  to  buy 
planes  from  them?  The  people  I  want  to  tell  this  to  are  the 
American  people." 

McGregor  shook  his  head.  "You'll  just  get  yourself  in 
wrong  with  the  censorship." 

"I  don't  care  about  that.  They've  treated  us  to  a  good  deal 
of  rough-house.  I  don't  mean  all  the  fellows  in  it — some  of 
them  are  as  white  as  anybody.  I  mean  the  whole  censorship. 
It's  un-American.  It's —  I  don't  care  how  wrong  I  get  in 
with  it." 

"You'd  ought  to.  You've  got  to  get  on  in  the  world.  What's 
the  use  of  spoiling  everything  at  the  start  ?" 

"I  don't  care  about  that,  either,"  said  Andy — "not  when 
such  a  thing  as  this  is  concerned." 

"But  you'll  be  sent  home — in  disgrace — and  where'll  be 
your  usefulness  then  ?" 


VICTOEIOUS  165 

Andy  swallowed  a  lump  that  was  in  his  throat  and  an 
swered  :  "There'll  be  plenty  of  men  to  take  my  job.3' 

"And  nobody'll  make  a  hero  of  you,  son." 

"I  hadn't  supposed  anybody  would  I" 

"Then"  —  McGregor  was  plainly  puzzled — '"what's  your 
game,  anyhow?" 

"My  game  ?  Why,  I  want  to  help  win  this  war.  I  want  the 
people  to  know  what's  wrong,  so's  they  can  stop  it." 

"Oh !"  McGregor  showed  relief.  "And  do  you  really  think 
you'd  get  that  across  if  you  printed  this  news?" 

"I  think  it  would  help." 

"My  boy,  you've  got  a  lot  to  learn.  I've  been  making  Amer 
ican  public  opinion,  or  bucking  it,  all  my  life.  We're  a  people 
of  change;  we  change  all  we  have,  and  as  soon  as  we've 
changed  everything,  we  change  our  minds.  The  folks  back 
home  would  be  hot  about  this  for  a  week,  then  the  baseball 
season'd  open,  or  we'd  take  a  German  trench,  and  nobody'd 
remember  to  ask  what  had  been  done  about  aeroplanes." 

Andy  squirmed  a  little. 

"Excuse  me,"  said  McGregor.  He  took  a  pad  from  the  table 
and  scribbled  with  the  gold  pencil  attached  to  it.  "Just  a  lit 
tle  business  matter,"  he  explained.  He  asked  Andy  to  ring 
and  ordered  the  answering  servant :  "Send  that  message." 

"Am  I  taking  too  much  of  your  time  ?"  asked  Andy,  when 
the  man  had  gone. 

McGregor  moved  his  shoulders  still  deeper  into  the  cush 
ions.  "You  haven't  taken  half  enough."  He  tossed  his  cigar 
into  a  convenient  ash-tray  and  put  the  stubby  fingers  of  his 
right  hand  tip  to  tip  with  those  of  his  left.  "You.  haven't 
really  brought  the  fellow  I'm  most  interested  in  into  your 
conversation  yet." 

"Who  do  you  mean?"  asked  Andy. 

"Your  friend:  myself.   Go  on.   Shoot." 

Andy  bit  his  lips. 

"It's  hard?" 

"Yes,  it  is,"  said  Andy.  "You've  always  been  so  decent 
to  me — " 

"Never  mind  that.     I  never  let  business  interfere  with 


166  VICTOKIOUS 

friendship,  or  friendship  with  business.  There's  no  reason 
why  anything  you  think  you've  got  to  write  should  hurt  our 
personal  relations.  Go  ahead." 

"Well/'  gulped  Andy,  "how  are  you  mixed  up  in  all  this  ?" 

McGregor  chuckled,  and  this  time  there  was  no  doubt  of 
the  chuckle's  genuineness.  "When  seen  at  his  palatial  resi 
dence  in  the  Ritz,"  he  continued,  "Mr.  B.  Frank  McGregor 
said  that  he  had  nothing  to  say." 

"I  had  to  ask  you,"  said  Andy. 

"Sure."  McGregor  lit  a  third  cigar.  "So  that's  settled," 
said  he.  "Now,  I  want  to  give  you  a  few  pointers."  He  pulled 
at  the  cigar.  "Andy,  how  old  are  you?" 

Andy  felt  his  blushes  return.  "I'm  over  twenty-one,"  he 
said,  defensively. 

"Are  you  ?  Well,  you  wouldn't  guess  it,  but  I'm  over  fifty. 
Thirty  years  makes  a  difference,  son." 

"Perhaps,"  said  Andy,  "sometimes." 

"Certainly  and  always,"  said  McGregor.  "Now,  I've  seen 
a  little  more  of  life  than  you,  and  I  want  to  give  you  some 
advice — just  like  your  father  might.  I'm  not  talking  for  my 
sake.  I  can  take  care  of  myself,  whatever  you  do ;  and  what 
ever  you  do,  I'm  going  to  be  your  friend.  So  I'm  talking  for 
your  sake.  Very  well.  I  won't  try  to  tell  you  how  you'll  hurt 
yourself  if  you  go  ahead  on  all  this  exposure  stuff,  because 
you  say  you  don't  care;  I  don't  believe  you  do.  D'you  ever 
hear  about  that  little  boy  whose  Sunday-school  teacher  asked 
him  what  kind  of  little  boys  went  to  Heaven?  He  said  the 
kind  of  little  boys  that  went  to  Heaven  were  dead  ones — and 
I  guess  you'd  be  willing  to  die  if  you  had  to  die  to  do  right; 
but  what  I  want  to  show  you  is  that  what's  right  for  one  day 
may  be  wrong  for  the  whole  year !" 

"I  don't  understand,"  said  Andy  uncomfortably. 

"Well,  you're  an  accredited  correspondent  of  the  army. 
You  can  argue  it  any  way  you  want  to,  but  if  you  get  over 
with  a  story  the  censorship  don't  approve,  you'll  not  be  play 
ing  fair  with  your  credentials." 

"The  censorship  hasn't  played  fair  with  me." 

"Does  it  matter  ?"  asked  McGregor,  looking  at  him  steadily. 


VICTORIOUS  167 

Andy  considered  this.    "No,  I  don't  suppose  it  does." 

"Well,  then?" 

"Then — then  I  can  resign." 

"You  can  resign  ?  Ye — es.  But  anyhow,  you've  got  to  look 
at  the  bigger  things.  We're  the  biggest  country  on  earth,  and 
the  richest  and  the  bravest ;  and  we're  fighting  for  democracy. 
I  used  to  tell  my  audiences  that  every  time  I  made  a  speech 
before  the  draft,  and  I  stumped  'most  all  Illinois  and  Indiana, 
too.  We've  got  our  faults  and  we  make  mistakes,  same  as 
anybody;  but  our  faults  don't  keep  us  from  being  big  and 
rich,  and  it  won't  make  us  any  braver,  or  fight  any  better,  to 
call  attention  to  our  mistakes." 

"I  think  it  will,"  said  Andy.  He  believed  it  would,  and  he 
had  to  say  so. 

McGregor  went  on : 

"You've  seen  a  few  things,  and  they're  bad—.  None  of  this 
is  for  publication,  mind  you." 

"Certainly  not,"  said  Andy. 

"You've  seen  a  few  bad  things,  then,  but  maybe,  if  you  were 
my  age,  you'd  see  more  that  weren't.  That's  the  way  with 
everything.  I've  put  up  office  buildings  in  my  time:  there 
was  never  one  I  didn't  find  mistakes  being  made  by  the  ma 
sons,  the  steel  construction  men,  the  plumbers — especially  the 
plumbers.  We'd  get  poor  material,  skimped  work.  Even  the 
architect'd  make  errors — in  fact,  he  always  did — things  like 
putting  a  staircase  where  no  staircase  could  be.  But  I  never 
expected  the  thing  to  be  built  as  if  it  was  a  kid's  house  built 
out  of  blocks.  It  was  all  along  going  to  be  an  office  building, 
and  it  always  ended  by  being  an  office  building  and  not  a 
stable.  Well,  it's  the  same  here.  Just  exactly.  We're  fighting 
for  democracy,  and  we  won't  win  for  autocracy.  We'll  come 
through  quicker  if  we  don't  stop  to  quarrel  over  details.  It's 
the  big  things  that  count,  Andy :  you  keep  your  eyes  on  them, 
and  you'll  be  giving  the  best  help  you  can  to  yourself  and 
your  country,  too.  I  tell  you  this  with  my  hand  on  my  heart" 
— McGregor  put  it  there — "that  what  we've  got  in  view,  we 
people  on  the  inside,  is  something  that's  larger  than  the  sum 
of  its  parts.  Just  give  America  a  chance." 


168  VICTORIOUS 

He  got  up,  pillows  slipping  to  the  floor  around  him,  and 
Andy  understood  that  he  was  at  last  to  go.  There  was  no 
leisure  granted  for  the  answers  that  seemed  ready  to  this 
appeal. 

"Think  it  over/'  said  McGregor,  patting  the  boy's  shoul 
ders.  "Just  think  it  over  a  bit." 

"Fll  do  that,  Mr.  McGregor;  but  I  know  I  won't  change 
my  mind." 

"Maybe  you  will.  That's  one  thing  no  man  can  be  sure  of 
till  he's  dead — like  the  kind  of  little  boys  that  go  to  Heaven, 
you  know.  Whatever  you  do,  we'll  stay  friends,  you  and  me, 
— personally.  But  just  you  take  a  day  or  two  more  to  think 
it  over." 


He  had  not  long  been  reseated  before  Garcia  was  announced. 
The  lieutenant  looked  tired  and  harried. 

"Your  man  just  telephoned  for  me,"  he  said. 

"I  haven't  seen  you  for  three  days,"  returned  McGregor, 
letting  his  caller  stand.  "Where've  you  been?" 

"Down  at  the  camp,  Mr.  McGregor.  You  remember  I  told 
you  I'd  have  to  go  down  there — that  our  men  were  going  in." 

"You  didn't  say  there  were  going  to  be  any  reporters  there." 

"I  didn't  think  there  would  be." 

"Humph.  Well,  they'll  keep  on  getting  the  better  of  you 
till  you  learn  how  to  treat  them,  Garcia.  I  don't  know  which 
is  a  worse  failure  r  that  'Hello,  Bill'  pose  of  yours  that  don't 
fool  anybody,  or  the  rough  stuff  that  only  makes  you  enemies. 
When'd  you  get  back?" 

"Only  a  couple  of  hours  ago." 

McGregor  looked  at  him,  but  this  was  not  at  all  the  sort 
of  McGregor  that  had  contemplated  Andy.  "Hear  of  any 
aviation  stories  lately?" 

"No,  sir." 

"Yes,  you  did!" 

Garcia's  protruding  eyes  were  those  of  a  wild  animal,  cowed, 
but  malevolent.  "I  did  hear — " 


VICTORIOUS  169 

"There's  an  aviation  story  that'll  go  out,  if  we  aren't  care 
ful,"  McGregor  interrupted.  "Young  Brown's  got  the  goods." 

"That  damned  boy's  been  everywhere,  the — " 

"Don't  call  him  names:  he  put  one  over  on  you,,  all  right. 
Why  didn't  you  tell  me  he'd  been  to  Tours?" 

Garcia  could  not  understand  why  he  was  not  permitted  to 
abuse  Andy:  "He  sneaked  it." 

"There  you  are !  I  said  he  put  one  over  on  you.  You're 
not  working  very  hard  to  earn  my  hard-earned  money,  Lieu 
tenant.  Now" — McGregor  half  rose  from  his  chair:  "you 
know  I  don't  cry  over  spilled  milk,  but  you  know  the  pull  I've 
got,  too.  You've  got  to  fix  this  thing  up,  see  ?" 

Garcia  visibly  quailed.  "Yes,  sir." 

"Don't  try  any  more  rough  stuff  with  Brown  unless  you 
have  to — he's  a  nice  kid,  and  he's  smart :  I  like  him.  Smooth 
him  down  somehow." 

"How  shall  I  smooth  him,  Mr.  McGregor?" 

The  contractor  thought  of  his  own  failure  in  that  direction ; 
but  he  did  not  tell  Garcia  why  he  chuckled.  A  second  later 
he  was  more  serious  than  ever,  frowning  like  a  fat,  but  none 
the  less  terrible,  Zeus. 

"That's  what  I  hire  you  to  know,"  he  said.  "This  is  my 
last  word  on  the  whole  subject.  If  anything  of  this  sort  hap 
pens  again,  by  the  Lord  God,  I'll  see  to  it  you  go  back  to  the 
line — and  into  the  trenches.  Good  morning." 

ill 

Andy  was  nearly  heartbroken.  There  was  not  much 
left  of  the  pride,  the  soaring  hopes  and  the  heroic  enthusiasms 
that  he  had  brought  with  him  to  France  and  once  thought  a 
part  of  his  being.  The  cynical  joke  of  his  "credentials"  and 
the  press-division's  derision  of  the  press;  the  neglect  prac 
tised  on  the  enlisted  men,  the  strain  upon  the  liaison,  the 
collapse  of  the  air  program,  the  failure  to  reach  the  general, 
and  now  the  virtual  confirmation  of  Evans'  charges  against 
McGregor :  any  one  of  these  things  might  not  so  much  have 
mattered,  but  the  cumulation  of  the  symptoms  indicated  the 


170  VICTOKIOUS 

presence  of  a  fatal  disease — and  from  that  disease  how  was 
the  American  cause  to  recover?  A  miracle  of  reenforcements 
and  then  a  second  miracle  of  open  fighting:  such  twin  mar 
vels  could  alone  hear  the  chance  of  a  cure. 

Innis  came  to  town  that  day,  and  Andy  and  Evans  saw 
him.  He  gave  them  such  details  of  the  march-out  as  they  had 
missed,  and  all  three  wrote  their  accounts  and  turned  them 
in  to  the  press-division's  offices.  They  were  promised  word 
of  the  date  when  the  manuscripts  would  be  mailed  to  America. 

Only  then  did  Andy  allow  himself  to  see  Sylvia,  and  to  her, 
almost  as  a  child  to  its  mother,  and  certainly  as  a  boy  to  his 
patron  saint,  he  told  of  everything  that  he  had  seen  and  ex 
perienced  since  their  separation.  He  did  it  as  they  walked 
far  out  into  the  Bois. 

She  heard  him  with  that  dear  familiar  pucker  of  her  pure 
brows :  the  world  was  not  all  as  it  should  be. 

"What  will  you  do?"  she  asked  him. 

"Write  it,  of  course :  I've  got  to." 

"Yes,  that.  But  about  what  Mr.  McGregor  said  to  you  ?" 

"Thinking  it  over?  That's  what  we're  doing  now!  But  I 
told  him  I  wouldn't  change  my  mind." 

"No ;  I  meant  about  your  credentials :  it  mightn't  be  quite 
fair  to  do  something  the  military  censorship  wouldn't  approve 
of,  so  long  as  you  had  War  Department  credentials." 

"I  guess  I've  done  some  such  things  already." 

"But  now  you  know;  and  you've  had  time  to  consider." 
Her  eyes  showed  the  clarity  of  her  moral  vision. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "that's  kind  of  the  way  it  struck  me  when 
McGregor  mentioned  it.  What  would  you  do  ?" 

"Oh,"  she  smiled  wistfully,  "please  don't  ask  my  advice !" 

Andy's  glance  was  a  wide  appeal.   "I've  got  to." 

"Please,"  pleaded  she. 

"Please,"  he  pleaded. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "if  I  were  in  your  place — of  course,  I'm 
not,  and  so  I  don't  know  half  so  much  about  it  as  you  do — " 

"You  see  things  straight." 

"Then  I'd  resign  the  credentials  and  write  the  article  and 
then  go  on  with  my  work  without  credentials." 


VICTORIOUS  171 

He  still  valued  them.  It  had  been  so  much  to  him  to  get 
them  that  they  still  retained  something  of  their  shallow  glory 
that  made  them  difficult  of  surrender. 

"I  guess  you're  right,"  he  nevertheless  said.  "McGregor — 
I  just  can't  help  liking  him,  but  he  can  somehow  think  one 
thing  and  act  another.  I  can't.  I'll  do  as  you  say." 

"Oh,  not  because  I  say  it  I"  she  hurriedly  interposed. 

"No,"  said  Andy,  with  a  heavy  sigh — "only  because  it's 
right.  But  it  was  you  showed  me  it  was  right — really,"  he 
smilingly  added.  "I  didn't  feel  it  so  much  at  McGregor's. 
No,  I'll  do  it  because  it's  the  decent  thing.  I'll  write  to  the 
censorship  this  evening." 

She  patted  his  arm  by  way  of  congratulation,  and  Andy 
felt  that,  great  as  was  his  sacrifice,  it  was  paid  far  beyond  its 
deserts. 

"I  knew  you'd  do  it,"  she  said.  Then  she  thought.  "But 
you  don't  have  to  give  the  censorship  here  any  warning ;  you 
don't  owe  them  that."  Since  she  was  to  be  an  adviser,  she 
would  advise  in  full.  "The  credentials  came  from  the  War  De 
partment  in  Washington,  didn't  they  ?" 

He  nodded. 

"Then  I  should  think  the  resignation  ought  to  go  to  the 
War  Department  in  Washington,  too." 

So,  that  night,  Andy  dropped  into  a  French  post-office  in 
the  rue  Vivienne  his  resignation.  It  was  addressed  to  the 
secretary  of  war. 

IV 

Then,  about  the  correspondents'  articles  telling  of  the  fact 
that  America  was  really  fighting,  nothing  happened.  Nothing 
happened  for  days. 

Innis  made  inquiries  and  reported  to  Andy  and  Evans  the 
result.  He  met  them  of  an  afternoon  at  the  Napolitain : 

"They  say  nobod/s  story's  to  be  released — not  even  the 
cabled  stuff — till  the  official  communique's  issued." 

Andy  thought  this  seemed  reasonable. 

Evans  sniffed.  "Too  reasonable  to  be  the  real  reason," 
said  he. 


VICTORIOUS 

"Garcia  says  lie  wants  to  see  you  about  something,  Brown," 
Innis  continued.  "I  don't  advise  you  to  go." 

They  agreed  to  wait  and  to  act  in  concert. 

In  his  account  of  the  march-out,  along  with  reflections 
that  he  haltingly  permitted  himself  and  glimpsing  records  of 
the  feelings  inspired  in  him  by  what  he  saw,  he  had  made 
some  references  to  conditions;  it  was  about  these,  he  fan 
cied,  that  Garcia  wanted  to  see  him.  Meanwhile  his  duty  to 
write  and  send  all  the  hard  facts  was  slowly  acquitted.  In  his 
Palais  Royal  garret  he  passed  long  hours,  pounding  his  type 
writer,  composing,  revising,  correcting.  He  wanted  to  be  fair, 
and  yet  he  wanted  to  be  thorough  :  it  was  hard  work  and  un 
grateful.  When  it  was  finished,  he  consulted  Evans  about 
sending  it  safely  to  America,  and  that  correspondent,  with  the 
go-to-hell  stare  in  which  he  performed  all  his  many  kind 
nesses,  offered  to  send  it  by  a  messenger. 

"Six  or  seven  of  us  use  one  whenever  we  hear  of  anybody 
going  home,"  he  said,  "and  this  fellow's  taking  stuff  for  the 
crowd." 

Thus  Andy  sent  his  report  to  Blunston. 


All  France  was  saying  that  the  Americans  were  in  the  bat 
tle-line  —  but  the  correspondents'  stories  of  the  entry  were 
not  released.  One  day  the  Paris  papers  printed  the  statement 
that  the  news  had  been  told  by  a  French  general  to  his  troops 
in  Salonica  —  but  the  correspondents  still  waited. 

"What's  wrong?"  Evans  demanded  of  Innis.  "Here's  old 
Colonel  Gaedeke  writing  about  it  in  the  Bremen  Zeitung. 
All  the  people  in  the  world  know  the  Americans  are  in  except 
the  people  of  America.  Our  Allies  are  told,  our  enemies  are 
told,  but  the  United  States  must  not  be  told." 

Then  came  the  news  that  the  Germans  had  raided  American 
trenches  —  and  still  no  American  communique  appeared. 

This  last  was  too  much.  Evans  dragged  Andy  and  Innis 
from  their  work,  and  the  three  of  them  assaulted  the  bureau 


VICTORIOUS  173 

in  the  rue  Ste.  Anne.  A  new  and  unknown  lieutenant  was  at 
Garcia's  desk  when  they  entered.  At  a  desk  at  the  other  end 
of  the  room  sat  another  lieutenant  busily  reading  proof,  a 
monkish-looking  man  whom  Andy  had  likewise  never  seen 
before,  but  who,  Evans  whispered,  was  Tarnow  of  The  Stars 
and  Stripes.  The  three  correspondents  stalked  up  to  Garcia's 
desk. 

"When  are  you  going  to  release  our  stories?"  demanded 
Evans. 

The  new  lieutenant  leaned  back  in  his  swivel-chair  and 
clasped  one  trim  knee  with  both  hands.  He  had  thin  red 
wrists. 

"I  haven't  heard  any  orders  about  it,  gentlemen,"  said  he. 
He  smiled.  Perhaps  he  should  not  have  smiled. 

"When  the  Last  Day  comes,"  said  Evans,  "Gabriel'll  have 
to  give  an  extra  toot  for  the  American  censorship.  Everybody 
knows  we're  in  except  our  own  people  back  home.  Why  are 
you  holding  it  up?" 

"I'm  obeying  orders,"  said  the  new  censor. 

"A  nice  mess  you'll  get  us  into  with  our  papers." 

"That  isn't  anything  in  my  young  life." 

Andy  thought  that  Evans  was  going  to  strike  the  fellow. 
Tarnow,  he  noticed,  did  not  lift  his  eyes  from  the  proof  he 
held. 

"Why  are  all  you  censors  going  around  here  in  mental 
mother-hubbards  and  intellectual  slippers  down-at-the-heel  ?" 
Evans  shouted.  "I  want  my  story  back :  I'm  going  to  send  it 
wi-censored !" 

"I  can't  give  you  back  your  story,"  said  the  lieutenant. 
"It's  locked  up  in  the  safe,  and  I  don't  know  the  combina 
tion." 

"Of  course  not,"  said  Evans :  "they  wouldn't  let  you  know 
so  much.  Don't  know  the  combination — this  sure  is  some  In 
telligence  Section!" 

Over  at  the  farther  desk,  Lieutenant  Tarnow  dropped  his 
proofs  and  noisily  rose.  Andy  saw  that  he  was  a  middle-aged 
dark  man  with  a  pale  face  and  deep-set  eyes.  His  thin  dark 
hair  was  cropped  close  and,  with  his  face  now  turned  toward 


174  VICTORIOUS 

the  correspondents,  he  had  even  a  more  monkish  appearance 
than  when  he  had  been  sitting  at  the  desk. 

"What's  the  matter,  anyhow?"  he  asked. 

"That's  our  question/'  said  Evans.  Innis  plucked  at  his 
sleeve,  but  was  shaken  off.  "Why  aren't  you  going  to  let  the 
American  papers  tell  the  American  people  that  their  boys  are 
fighting?" 

Tarnow  disregarded  him  and  spoke  to  Innis : 

"We've  done  the  best  we  could  for  you — but  no  commu 
nique's  to  be  issued." 

It  was  unbelievable :  the  news  "was  not  to  go  to  the  papers 
until  the  communique  appeared" — and  no  communique  was 
to  appear ! 

Tarnow  had  come  forward  to  the  flat-topped  desk  and  stood 
behind  it  by  the  side  of  the  new  lieutenant.  Andy  was  oppo 
site,  ready  to  seize  the  hard-breathing  Evans.  Innis  took  two 
steps  forward. 

"Here,"  said  he,  "is  a  cable  for  my  magazine."  He  held 
out  a  slip  of  flimsy  paper  to  Tarnow.  "Bead  it.  It  calls  on 
the  editor  to  make  a  protest  direct  to  the  president — and  not 
any  secret  protest,  but  a  public  one.  I'm  through.  I'm  going 
to  send  that  message,  and  nobody  dares  stop  me." 

As  if  mechanically,  Tarnow  picked  up  the  paper.  It  rattled 
as  he  did  so.  He  did  not  read  it.  His  somber  eyes  were  fixed 
on  Evans,  and  Andy,  whose  attention  had  been  distracted 
from  his  friend  by  the  production  of  the  cable-message,  now 
saw  that  there  was  need:  Evans  was  purple  with  rage.  He 
leveled  a  finger  at  Tarnow. 

"You're*  a  bunch  of  dirty  crooks !"  he  cried. 

Andy  seized  him  as  he  lurched  forward.  The  new  lieutenant 
hopped  to  a  window  and  became  intently  engrossed  in  the 
prospect  of  a  roof  and  a  blank  wall.  Innis  barred  Evans' 
progress  with  an  outflung  arm. 

"Leave  this  to  me,  Owen,"  he  said,  over  his  shoulder. 

"Keep  quiet,  Evans!"  whispered  Andy. 

But  Innis  was  now  in  nearly  as  great  need  of  restraint. 
He  leaned  over  the  desk.  He  protruded  his  chin,  and,  as  he 
spoke,  his  thick-set  frame  shook. 


VICTOKIOUS 

"I'm  going  to  send  that,"  he  reiterated,  nodding  toward  the 
cable-message,  which  still  fluttered  from  Tarnow's  hand. 
"You  tell  us  there  isn't  going  to  be  any  communique,  and 
we  know  there  wasn't  ever  one  that  said  our  boys  came  out 
of  the  trenches  in  the  autumn.  Do  you  mean  your  gang's 
keeping  the  American  people  in  the  dark?  You  mean  you 
want  the  folks  at  home  to  think  American  soldiers  have  been 
fighting  ever  since  their  experimental  experience  at  the  front 
last  November  ?  Is  your  game  to  make  our  public  think  there 
hasn't  been  any  gap  between  that  step  in  training  and  this 
real  beginning  ?"  He  raised  his  fist. 

Andy  laid  a  firm  hold  of  Evans. 

Innis  took  a  fresh  breath  and  went  on : 

"It  is  plain  what  you  fellows  are  after.  You  announced  to 
the  American  public  that  we  had  such-and-such  'fighting  men' 
in  France ;  you  meant  the  term  fighting  men  to  be  interpreted 
as  fmen  that  are  fighting' — and  to  back  this  up  you  are  now 
pretending  that  we've  been  fighting  continuously  ever  since 
last  autumn."  He  shook  his  fist.  "Tell  me  now :  isn't  that  the 
game?" 

Andy  almost  loosed  his  hold  of  Evans.  Innis's  words  rang 
deafeningly  in  his  ears ;  they  dazzled  his  eyes  by  their  astound 
ing  revelation.  If  it  was  true,  as  Andy  was  convinced  it  was, 
then  it  explained  much  that  had  heretofore  been  inexplicable 
in  the  affairs  of  the  A.  E.  F. 

"You've  all — all  put  up  bonds — or  your  papers  have," 
Tarnow  said.  "If  you  aren't  careful,  you'll  forfeit  them." 

He  was  answered  by  a  volley. 

"Then  we'll  buy  the  truth  cheap !"  said  Innis. 

Evans  tugged  against  Andy's  restraining  arm :  "To  hell 
with  the  bonds !" 

"You  can't  touch  mine,"  panted  Andy,  between  struggles 
with  his  prisoner.  "I've  resigned  my  credentials." 

"Give  me  back  that  cable,"  said  Innis.  "I'm  going  out  to 
send  it." 

Tarnow  glanced  toward  his  subordinate;  but  that  officer 
remained  intent  in  his  contemplation  of  the  roof.  Then  some 
thing  else  became  immediately  manifest:  Tarnow  saw  that 


176  VICTORIOUS 

Evans  was  secured  by  Andy  and  that  Andy  was  secure  by 
reason  of  his  restraint  of  Evans.  On  these  two,  then,  his  wrath 
descended.  He  answered  Innis's  demand  for  the  cable-mes 
sage  by  dropping  that  on  the  desk,  the  preceding  accusation 
he  evaded  by  firmly  attacking  in  words  the  men  that,  he  was 
assured,  could  not  attack  him  with  their  fists. 

"A.  lot  we  care  for  your  resignation  I"  he  shouted.  " We'll 
get  your  money  anyhow.  We'll  get  you — we  have  got  you. 
Don't  either  of  you  try  anything."  He  stepped  back  toward 
his  desk  with  every  phrase  he  uttered;  but  with  every  phrase 
his  voice  rose  higher.  "We've  got  your  last  stories  locked  up 
in  our  safe.  They  read  just  as  if  you  saw  that  march-out,  and 
we  can  prove  you  took  the  night-train  to  Paris.  If  you  two 
try  to  make  any  trouble,  we'll  get  the  Committee  on  Public 
Information,  back  home,  to  blow  you  up  for  fakers." 

As  he  finished,  he  hurriedly  sat  down  at  his  desk  and  buried 
his  face  in  his  copy,  as  a  signal  of  dismissal.  At  that  moment 
the  door  opened  and  Garcia's  woolly  head  appeared. 

"Eeenf orcements !"  shouted  Evans. 

They  forgot  Tarnow,  against  whom  they  had  nothing  per 
sonally;  they  forgot  the  lieutenant  at  the  window,  and  di 
rected  their  entire  anger  against  the  newcomer.  Garcia,  see 
ing  the  rage  in  their  faces,  sprang  back  in  a  panic.  He 
banged  the  door  shut  after  him.  From  the  room  beyond  there 
came  the  click  of  a  key. 

He  was  none  too  soon.  Andy  released  Evans,  and  both 
charged  forward. 

Tarnow  did  not  lift  his  head.  The  new  censor  turned  round 
with  upraised  arms: 

"Gentlemen  I   Gentlemen !" 

"Oh,  shut  up  I"  said  Evans. 

Innis  was  regaining  his  composure. 

"Come  on,  Owen,"  said  he.   "What  do  you  care?" 

"I  don't  care."  He  glowered  at  Tarnow's  motionless  back. 
"Nothing  they  can  do  to  Brown's  story  or  mine  can  make 
fakes  of  'em:  they're  legitimate  newspaper-stories,  both  of 
'em."  Wholly  balked  by  the  amazing  exit  of  Garcia,  Evans 


VICTORIOUS  177 

was  himself  somewhat  calmer.  "But  I'd  just  like  to  tell  that 
skunk  what  I  think  of  him/' 

Andy's  anger  died  in  a  smile.  "Well,"  said  he,  "you  know 
what  happens  to  you  if  you  try  to  talk  to  a  skunk." 

"Look  here" — Innis  was  addressing  the  new  lieutenant  now : 
"tell  headquarters  we'll  give  it  twenty-four  hours  to  issue  a 
communique  and  release  our  stories.  If  it  doesn't  come  across, 
I'll  send  this  cable" — he  picked  up  his  message — "and  we'll 
all  of  us  get  the  news  over  anyhow.  They  can't  jail  us  till 
.we've  done  that." 

The  lieutenant  bowed  acknowledgment  and  relief. 

"You're  going?"  he  asked. 

"We  sure  are,"  said  Evans. 

"I  think  Lieutenant  Garcia  wants  to  see  Mr.  Brown." 

"Then,"  said  Andy,  "let  Mr.  Garcia  come  to  my  rooms: 
he  knows  my  address." 

But  he  went  out  in  a  daze.  .  .  .  How,  surrounded  by  such 
quacks,  could  democracy  ever  triumph  over  the  disease  that 
their  ministrations  fostered? 

VI 

In  the  hallway,  Evans  walked  to  a  door  that  they  knew  must 
communicate  with  the  room  into  which  Garcia  had  fled.  Ev 
ans  seized  the  handle. 

"I'll  just  give  him  an  extra  scare.  Of  course  the  careful 
man's  locked  himself  in."  He  tried  to  turn  the  handle.  "It 
is  locked !"  he  grinned.  He  gave  the  thing  a  parting  shake. 

yn 

Going  toward  the  provost-marshal's  office  was  an  orderly 
with  several  sheets  of  paper  in  his  grasp.  They  were,  he  said, 
in  answer  to  Innis's  question,  the  lists  of  the  recently  killed 
and  wounded  at  the  American  front.  He  would  not  give  them 
up,  but  Andy  and  Evans  looked  over  his  shoulder  while  Innis 
argued  with  him.  Andy  saw  the  words : 

"Wounded  in  action.  .  .  .  Degree  undetermined.  .  .  . 
Christian  Shuman.  .  .  ." 


CHAPTER  XII 

CHRISSLY  HEARS  THE  NEARER  WATERS  ROLL 

IT  HAD  been  as  if  they  were  shivering  in  the  cleft  of  an  ice 
berg.  Ice  varnished  the  clay-cemented  logs  that  walled  their 
narrow  trench;  when  either  man  crouched  a  little  lower  into 
the  freezing  mud  of  the  floor,  a  thin  crust  of  ice  crackled  and 
rang  under  him ;  from  the  roof  of  the  gulley  which  was  a  con 
tracted  strip  of  star-spattered  sky,  the  planets  that  seemed 
close  enough  for  picking  hung  like  so  many  icicles.  Every 
time  Chrissly  and  the  storekeeper  from  New  Jersey  stretched 
their  stiffened  arms,  they  touched  something  colder  than  even 
themselves;  every  time  they  raised  their  aching  eyes,  they 
saw  ice  or  hoar-frost;  a  film  of  frost  had  formed  on  their 
ragged  overcoats.  The  cold  gradually  ate  inward;  it  left 
the  surface  of  their  bodies  without  sensation  and  settled,  a 
dull  pain  in  the  bones  of  their  skulls  and  in  their  innermost 
organs.  They  breathed  lightly  and  with  care,  because  to 
breathe  was  to  suffer.  For  an  hour  there  had  been  no  sound 
save  the  occasional  glassy  tinkle  of  breaking  ice:  they  might 
have  been  afloat  alone  on  their  berg  in  an  arctic  sea. 

Between  his  chattering  teeth,  which  clicked  distinctly  at 
the  period,  the  man  from  New  Jersey  whispered:  "There 
w-weren't  any  sh-shells  in  my  trench  when  I  was  out  here  in 
N-November.  Fd  kind  of  1-like  to  know  what  it's  1-1-like 
when  a  shell  explodes  in  your  t-t-trench."  After  five  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  one  always  whispers  on  the  front  line. 

WHANG! 

The  night  burst  into  flame  about  two  hundred  yards  to 
their  left.  Then — darkness,  blinding  because  there  had  been 
light. 

178 


VICTOEIOUtS  179 

chattered  Chrissly,  "y-you've  c-come  to  a  g-good 
p-p-place  to  f-f-find  that  out  a'ready." 

The  man  was  close  beside  him,  but  only  just  discernible — 
only  just  discernible  and  scarcely  to  be  recognized  as  an 
American  soldier.  In  any  conscript-camp,  from  the  one  at 
Ayr,  Massachusetts,  to  that  at  Anniston,  Alabama,  the  newest 
reserve-officer  would  have  censured  him.  His  uniform  had  suf 
fered  the  sea-changesj  that  every  American  uniform  sooner  or 
later  suffered  in  France;  on  him,  and  on  Chrissly  also,  the 
rakish  service-hat  had  been  replaced  by  a  fore-and-aft  cap 
pulled  far  over  his  ears;  a  muffler  knitted  in  some  warm 
American  home  swathed  the  head  from  brows  to  chin;  crude 
shears  had  raggedly  amputated  the  overcoat  at  the  line  of 
the  knees ;  there  was  the  sound  of  water  sucking  through  the 
straw-wrapped  boots,  whenever  either  man  wriggled  his  swol 
len  toes  to  keep  up  the  circulation  of  the  blood. 

"Th-that,"  continued  Chrissly,  evidently  nodding  toward 
the  scene  of  the  explosion,  "must  V  been  one  o'  th-them  there 
trench-mortars :  m-m-minenwerfers  they  calls  'em.  Some  one 
s-says,  daytimes  you  kin  s-see  'em  c-comin'." 

"I  know/'  said  the  man  from  New  Jersey.  "Ever  w-watch 
a  football-game?  Those  things  look  1-like  a  spiral  k-kick- 
off— " 

Another  concussion  put  the  period  to  his  concluding  sen 
tence,  a  concussion  different  from  its  predecessor  and  followed 
by  a  sound  for  all  the  world  like  the  first  drops  of  a  rainstorm 
on  autumnal  leaves.  It  was  shrapnel,  and  this,  as  both  occu 
pants  of  the  trench  were  aware,  meant  that  the  unseen  enemy 
was  finding  a  range  for  his  larger  guns. 

"Now  for  the  b-big  show,"  said  the  man  from  New  Jersey. 

Chrissly,  who  had  been  thinking  first  of  Leonie  and  then  of 
the  quiet  little  farmhouse  at  home  in  summertime,  intended 
to  make  a  polite  reply.  Perhaps  he  made  it.  He  didn't  know. 
Later  he  did  not  even  remember  the  tremendous  bang  that 
must  have  succeeded  when  the  star-spattered  sky  split  open 
and  came  tumbling  down  upon  his  head.  .  .  . 


180  VICTORIOUS 

II 

Somebody  wearing  a  just-visible  brassard  was  bending  over 
him. 

".  .  .  he's  all  right.  ...  It  fell  in  the  next 
trench.  .  .  » 

"JSTo,  look  here ;" — it  was  another  man  with  a  brassard  that 
now  spoke — "shirt's  sopping.  He's  got  his." 

Chrissly  realized  that  it  was  of  him  they  were  talking.  He 
caught  shattered  phrases  about  a  broken  left  arm  and  an  ab 
dominal  wound,  a  request  for  a  first-aid  pouch.  As  yet  he  felt 
no  pain ;  he  felt  only  very  numb  and  very  tired.  He  heard  one 
of  these  newcomers  say  something  about  "nineteen  years  old" 
and  the  other  add:  "And  fifty  years'  experience  in  the  last 
few  days."  They  seemed  excessively  busy  with  him,  but  one 
of  them  said  that  the  man  from  New  Jersey  was  dead.  Then 
came  the  crisp  order: 

"Stretcher  this  way !" 

Chrissly  fainted. 

in 

Out  of  the  communication- trench,  in  the  noise  and 
flying  lumps  of  frozen  earth  scattered  by  a  fresh  explosion, 
two  more  men  trotted  with  a  stretcher.  On  it  they  placed  the 
inert  thing  that  had  been  Chrissly  and  with  it  they  staggered, 
stooping  behind  clay  mounds,  log-buttressed,  slipping  and 
stumbling  through  ice  and  mud,  now  and  then  another  shell 
blazing  and  bellowing  close  at  hand. 

Of  old,  army  medical-corps  waited  for  the  wounded  to  be 
brought  to  the  rear;  in  modern  warfare,  those  corps  stretch 
one  saving  hand  up  to  the  first  line.  The  injured  man  is 
taken  direct  to  a  regimental  dressing-station ;  if  his  hurts  de 
mand  it,  he  is  carried  thence  to  more  elaborately  equipped 
stations,  and  therefrom,  when  the  need  arises,  to  the  farther 
field-hospitals,  or  "evacuation-hospitals,"  where  delicate  op 
erations  may  be  performed,  and  where,  often,  there  are  two 
thousand  beds.  Miles  behind  these,  in  the  safety-zone,  are 
the  large  base-hospitals  at  which  "long  cases"  are  cared  for 


VICTORIOUS  181 

until  the  patients  are  fit  to  be  sent  to  seaside  convalescents' 
camps.    On  such  a  progress  Chrissly  was  now  embarked. 

IV 

The  bearers  stopped  before  a  large  dug-out  where,  carefully 
protected  flash-lamp  in  hand,  a  regimental  surgeon  was  rap 
idly  inspecting  several  forms  on  so  many  stretchers. 

"Quick,  sir — please !"  said  one  of  Chrissly's  bearers. 

The  surgeon  never  looked  up  from  his  rapid  work. 

"Quick,  sir — please!"  pleaded  other  bearers  for  other  bur 
dens. 

"First  come,  first  serve,"  said  the  surgeon. 

Finally  he  reached  the  unconscious  Chrissly.  He  injected 
a  serum,  applied  a  rough  splint  to  the  broken  arm,  applied 
a  temporary  dressing  to  the  torn  abdomen.  He  was  deft  and 
quick,  but  there  were  three  new  stretchers  waiting  before  he 
had  finished  with  Chrissly. 

"Field-hospital,"  he  decreed.   "Get  orders  there." 

Chrissly's  bearers  bore  him  away.   .   .    . 


The  field-hospital  was  like  a  circus-tent  illuminated  for  a 
night-performance.  There  were  rows  of  narrow  tables  bathed 
in  light ;  on  the  tables  lay  wounded  men,  and  along  each  TOW 
a  surgeon  walked  with  an  orderly  on  one  hand  and  a  nurse  on 
the  other.  At  every  table,  the  inspection-party  would  pause. 
There  was  the  gleam  of  a  knife,  the  ripping  of  cloth  as  the 
nurse  cut  shirt  or  drawers  away  from  the  wound;  there  was 
a  brief  direction  from  the  surgeon.  Then  the  orderly  would 
tie  a  tag  to  the  patient's  blouse,  and  the  party  would  move  on. 

Chrissly's  eyes  were  open  now. 

"Pain?"  asked  the  surgeon  when  he  reached  Chrissly. 

Somehow — he  neither  nodded  nor  spoke — Chrissly  signified 
assent. 

The  surgeon  examined  him,  readjusted  the  splint  and  told 
the  nurse  to  devise  a  new  dressing. 


183  VICTOKIOUS 

"Can  lie  stand  a  hypodermic  ?"  asked  the  nurse. 

The  surgeon  nodded. 

The  orderly — he  was  a  third-year  medical-student — pro 
duced  the  needle.  The  nurse  bared  Chrissly's  right  arm  and 
bound  it  with  a  tight  thong  just  above  the  elbow. 

"Make  a  fist/'  said  the  surgeon. 

Chrissly's  eyes  had  become  glassy.  He  had  not  yet  uttered 
a  sound.  He  uttered  none  now,  but  he  clenched  his  right 
hand. 

In  the  crock  of  the  arm,  the  veins  began  to  swell.  The 
nurse  wiped  the  skin  above  them  with  a  bit  of  cotton  soaked 
in  iodine. 

"Be  careful  not  to  go  clear  through  the  vein,"  the  surgeon 
cautioned.  "Now !" 

The  orderly  nodded.  He  hooked  the  curved  needle  into  the 
skin.  The  nurse  loosened  the  thong.  An  index-finger  slowly 
pushed  the  piston  of  the  syringe — pushed  until  the  well  was 
empty. 

"That  doesn't  hurt/'  said  the  surgeon:  "you  only  think 
it  does." 

The  nurse  again  applied  the  iodine. 

Within  five  minutes,  a  sleeping  Chrissly,  tagged  with  the 
number  of  the  base-hospital  for  which  his  baggage  of  flesh 
was  destined,  had  been  lifted  into  one  of  a  row  of  waiting 
ambulances. 

VI 

There  were  three  bunks  placed  lengthwise  in  the  ambulance, 
two  swinging  high  along  the  sides  and  one  down  the  center. 
The  side  ones  had  each  its  silent,  motionless  patient  when 
Chrissly  was  carried  there.  A  lantern,  suspended  from  the 
roof,  shed  a  faint  light  over  chalky  faces  and  bandaged  heads 
strangely  unhuman:  already  the  bandages  were  stained  with 
red.  A  flap  of  canvas  and  a  high  board  separated  the  driver's 
seat  from  the  interior.  A  private  of  the  hospital-corps  clam 
bered  in  and  took  his  post,  in  a  crouching  position,  at  the 
edge  of  the  open  rear,  where  he  would  be  in  readiness  for 
rough-and-ready  care  of  the  inert  passengers. 


YICTOEIOUS  183 

"Your  first  trip  to-night?"  asked  the  chauffeur. 

The  other  man  said  that  it  was. 

"Pretty  busy  out  your  way?" 

"Pretty  busy." 

"I  haven't  had  any  sleep  for  forty-eight  hours,"  said  the 
chauffeur.  The  tired  mask  that  was  his  face  smiled  a  little : 
"but  HI  be  all  right  to-morrow  night — they're  going  to  al 
low  me  six  hours  in  a  real  bed.  So  long :  see  you  at  the  next 
rest-station." 

He  disappeared  in  the  darkness.  He  cranked  the  motor. 
The  ambulance  snorted,  shook,  lurched  forward. 

They  began  their  long  drive. 

VII 

For  some  time  occasional  shells  burst  in  the  ruined  fields 
beside  them,  or  howled  like  vaulting  hyenas ;  once  the  dimmed 
headlight  of  the  ambulance  showed  them,  just  in  time,  a  vast 
crater,  newly  made,  directly  in  their  course.  Then,  gradually, 
the  external  noises  ceased,  and  they  were  alone  in  the  cruel 
cold  and  the  tangible  night  with  no  other  noises  than  the  clat 
ter  of  the  motor,  the  flapping  of  the  canvas  and  the  relent 
less  roar  of  the  rushing  wind. 

The  ambulance  pitched  like  a  narrow  ship  in  a  head-on 
sea;  it  rolled  like  a  dory  in  the  trough  of  the  waves;  its 
movements  sickened.  One  of  the  wounded  men  vomited ;  the 
second  babbled  deliriously  about  a  woman,  grew  violent,  tore 
off  his  bandages :  the  orderly,  dashed  from  side  to  side,  cleaned 
up,  did  his  best  at  replacing  the  disordered  lint  and  linen. 
Chrissly  remained  silent.  .  .  . 

The  orderly  crouched  at  the  rear  and  clung  there.  A  puff 
of  cold  air  extinguished  the  lantern.  Groping  to  relight  it, 
his  fingers  touched  something  wet  and  sticky :  the  face  of  the 
man  that  had  been  delirious,  but  now  silent  and  still.  By  the 
first  flicker  of  the  relighted  lamp,  he  saw  that  this  man  was 
dead. 

Once  there  came  a  cold  glow  ahead.  A  benumbed  driver, 
an  orderly,  two  desperately  wounded  soldiers  and  one  lifeless, 


184-  yiCTOKIOUS 

they  drew  up  at  a  canteen,  where  Red  Cross  women  served  hot 
soup  and  coffee.  Chrissly  had  not  stirred.  Then,  whole, 
wounded  and  dead,  the  little  party  lumbered  off  again  into 
the  night. 

They  hurried.  The  cold  became  more  intense.  Cramped 
on  the  floor,  the  orderly  looked  out  at  the  white  road  racing 
behind  them;  its  bordering  trees  stretched  appealing  arms 
heavenward.  Only  after  an  interminable  time  did  it  seem  to 
be  growing  clearer.  They  began  to  pass  other  ambulances, 
portable  kitchens,  supply-camions,  going  whence  this  ambu 
lance  had  come. 

At  last,  the  winter  sun  rose.    .    .    . 

VIII 

It  was  two  hours  beyond  the  meridian  when  they  passed  a 
sentry  and  entered  a  large  gateway. 

"Say,  is  this  a  hotel?" 

It  was  Chrissly's  voice  that  was  speaking.  He  must  have 
been  conscious  for  some  time. 

"No,"  said  the  orderly.    "And  you  mustn't  talk/' 

They  didn't  look  unlike  the  grounds  of  a  summer-resort 
hotel,  the  grounds  of  this  hospital.  Up  on  a  hill  stood  a 
handsome  old  chateau  with  its  gardens  stretched,  acre  after 
acre,  all  around  it.  But  a  close  glance  showed  that  the 
war  had  converted  it  to  a  more  useful  purpose.  Fifty  new 
buildings  had  sprung  up  around  the  old  ones,  and  buildings 
still  newer — enough  for  a  thousand  more  beds — were  in  process 
of  construction  just  beyond  the  farthest  wall. 

Other  orderlies  carried  Chrissly  into  a  receiving-ward.  For 
the  past  week  he  had  lived  with  rats  and  death  in  mud  and 
filth ;  he  was  half -frozen,  he  was  caked  with  dirt,  he  was  crawl 
ing  with  a  dozen  different  kinds  of  vermin:  nurses  in  crisp 
white  uniforms  took  away  his  clothes  for  fumigation;  he  was 
carried  to  the  bathroom  next  door  and  shaved  and  washed — 
in  the  luxury  of  warm  water.  Then  they  wheeled  him  into  a 
third  apartment  for  diagnosis.  .  .  . 

An  important  surgeon  was  complaining: 


VICTORIOUS  185 

'"What — another  ?  This  isn't  right :  the  number  of  patients 
is  changing  all  the  time.  Here  it's  jumped  from  four  hun 
dred  to  seven  hundred  in  two  days  without  warning.  And 
you  can't  count  on  orders.  I  get  word  to  be  ready  for  one 
hundred  and  sixty,  and  along  come  ambulances  with  two  hun 
dred  and  one." 

Still  grumbling,  the  overworked  man  looked  at  Chrissly 
and  ordered  an  immediate  operation:  "Too  weak  for  chloro 
form.  Nitrous  oxide." 

IX 

Chrissly  lay  on  the  operating  table — a  clean  Chrissly,  very 
white  and  with  that  refinement  of  face  which  loss  of  blood  al 
most  invariably  produces.  The  nurses  were  grouped  around 
him,  surgeons  and  assistants  already  at  work  with  the  fluoro- 
scope. 

Above  the  lad's  upturned  feet  and  about  a  yard  away  stood 
an  X-ray  apparatus.  Its  flesh-piercing  light  fell  on  a  disk 
of  metal  that  an  orderly  held  over  his  bared  waist.  The  violet 
rays  passed  through  the  disk  and  into  the  patient's  abdominal 
cavity:  the  surgeon's  eyes  followed  them  through  the  metal 
and  into  the  flesh,  his  knife-plying  fingers  worked  under  the 
disk  and  deep  in  the  wounded  man's  belly.  He  cut  with  that 
solid  plate  for  a  window :  he  could  see  what  he  sought  before 
he  set  out  for  it,  and,  if  he  overlooked  any  shell  fragments, 
there  was  a  magnetic  contrivance  that  sounded  a  buzzer  when 
he  got  near  them.  .  .  . 

X 

It  would  be  all  right,  they  said  to  one  another.  The  broken 
arm,  of  course,  was  nothing;  nor  the  superficial  wounds  on 
it;  as  for  the  abdominal  wound,  the  operation  had  been  suc 
cessful,  and  the  patient  had  survived  the  shock.  A  stay  here 
under  treatment,  then  a  vacation  at  one  of  the  convalescents' 
camps  by  the  seaside,  perhaps  a  furlough  home,  and  he  might 
even  be  well  enough  to  fight  again — by  March  or  April. 

So  they  clothed  Chrissly  in  the  cotton-wool  pa  jama-suit 
that  is  the  military-hospital  uniform.  They  took  him  to 


186  VICTOKIOUS 

the  surgical  ward  and  put  him  to  bed  among  a  row  of  other 
wounded.  Outside,  on  a  special  shelf  bearing  his  hospital- 
number,  had  been  placed  his  "Patient's  Equipment5':  bed- 
linen,  socks,  bathrobe  and  towels.  Now  beside  his  cot  was 
hung  a  Red  Cross  "Comfort  Bag." 

He  opened  his  eyes  upon  the  pretty  nurse  that  was  tucking 
the  covers  about  him.  He  was  still  uncertain  as  to  his  where 
abouts,  and  something  that  had  happened  in  the  trenches — to 
himself,  to  his  captain  or  to  the  man  from  New  Jersey;  he 
could  not  make  out  which — had  wiped  every  word  of  French 
from  his  memory. 

"Oh,  miss,"  he  asked  the  nurse,  in  the  heavy  accent  of  his 
childhood,  "kin  you  speak  English  still  ?" 

She  smiled.    "Of  course.    I'm  an  American." 

"Are  you  an  American,  miss?" 

She  nodded. 

"Well,"  whispered  Chrissly,  "then  might  I  ask  you  some- 
sing,  like  one  American  to  anuzzer?" 

The  nurse  bent  her  head.    "Yes.    What  is  it?" 

He  fixed  his  weary  glance  on  her  face.  His  thin  white  face 
worked  for  a  moment.  "Ain't  this  climate  hell  a'ready  ?"  was 
what  he  asked  her. 

She  didn't  laugh.  She  said  it  was  indeed  hell.  Then  she 
attempted  to  turn  to  the  man  in  the  next  cot :  one  of  the  last 
week's  patients  with  a  shell-scooped  thigh. 

"An'  just  one  sing  more,  miss,"  insisted  Chrissly,  a  help 
less  hand  fluttering  to  detain  her.  "They  say  this  here  place 
ain't  a  hotel  ?" 

"No,  no,"  the  nurse  answered.  "It's  not  a  hotel,  but  you 
really  mustn't  talk  any  more." 

Chrissly  was  very  weak,  but  very  persistent.  He  turned 
his  eyes,  since  he  could  not  turn  his  head,  to  his  neighbor. 

"Well,  mister,  if  it  ain't  a  hotel,  is  it  one  o'  them  there  org 
idressin'-places  ?" 

The  man  in  the  next  bed  comforted  him : 

"Naw,  this  here  ain't  one  o'  them  way-stations  on  the  road- 
back.  Not  much.  This  is  a  base-hospital,  this  is.  You  can 
go  to  sleep  safe,  sonny;  you're  home  at  last." 


CHAPTER  XIII 

A  SHORT  ONE,  SHOWING,  HOWEVER,  THAT  FRANCE  IS  NOT  THE 
ONLY  PLACE  WHERE  FATE  GATHERS  THREADS  FOR  HER  IN 
TRICATE  WEB 

IT  WAS  hard  for  even  the  Tollens  pride  to  keep  the  tears 
from  overflowing  Sarah  Brown's  eyes  when  she  left  the  Tidd 
house  under  the  lash  of  Mrs.  Ralph's  misunderstanding  in 
sults,  and  there  was  a  traitorous  moisture  in  the  glance  that, 
a  few  minutes  later,  encountered  Miss  Hattie  Lloyd's  on  Elm 
Avenue,  which  Miss  Hattie  was  quick  to  perceive.  The  town- 
gossip  gave  herself  a  hug  of  anticipation.  She  planted  herself 
directly  in  the  other's  way. 

"Why,  Sarah,"  she  said,  "aren't  you  feeling  well?" 

Sarah  replied  that  she  was  never  better. 

"You  look  run  down  or  worried" — perhaps  it  was  Andy ! — 
"What  do  you  hear  from  Andy?"  Miss  Hattie  inquired. 

"He's  well." 

"You  hear  right  often,  don't  you?" 

"He  writes  twice  a  week." 

"And  he's  getting  along  all  right?" 

"Very  well  indeed." 

Miss  Hattie  cocked  her  head:  "I  don't  see  anything  with 
his  name  to  it  in  the  newspapers." 

"He  doesn't  put  his  name  to  what  he  writes,  Miss  Hattie, 
and  he  doesn't  write  for  any  of  the  Philadelphia  papers." 

"Oh,  doesn't  he?   Have  you  joined  the  Red  Cross?" 

Sarah  shook  her  head. 

"I  thought  I  saw  you  coming  out  of  the  Tidd  house  just 
now." 

It  struck  Sarah  that  perhaps  Miss  Hattie,  who  knew  every 
thing  about  Americus  and  remembered  most,  might  throw 
some  light  on  Mrs.  Ralph's  astounding  assertions. 

187 


188  VICTORIOUS 

"I  was  just  in  there  looking  for  Mr.  Bolingbroke.  I — . 
By  the  way,  Miss  Hattie,  did  my  father  ever  live  there  ?" 

Had  she  intended  it  as  such,  Sarah  could  have  devised  no 
better  diversion.  An  appeal  to  the  past  was  the  one  means  of 
distracting  Miss  Hattie's  attention  from  the  present. 

"That  house?"  She  cocked  her  head  again  and  munched 
the  quid  of  recollection.  "Hum.  Why,  let's  see.  Hum/'  She 
had  forgotten,  and  she  always  felt  forgetfulness  to  be  shame 
ful.  "He  surely  did  live  somewhere  near  here,  for  a  while, 
right  after  he  was  married.  Of  course,  your  people's,  your 
grandfather's,  was  the  old  place  on  Hickory  Street:  'Mount 
Horeb'  they  used  to  call  it,  though  I  could  never  see  why — 
you  were  born  there." 

"I  know  that,"  said  Sarah.  "I  was  just  wondering,  some 
how,  whether  we  ever  lived  in  this  one."  She  made  a  quick 
circuit  of  her  interlocutor.  "It  doesn't  matter,"  she  added, 
and  meant  it.  "I  was  only  wondering."  She  made  ofi,  down 
Elm  Avenue. 

If  she  had  not  said  that  it  didn't  matter,  Miss  Hattie  might 
have  thought  no  more  about  it,  but  Miss  Hattie's  rule  of  judg 
ment  was  that  nobody  ever  told  the  truth.  There  she  stood 
looking  after  Sarah  with  speculation  in  her  birdlike  eyes. 

"I  wonder  what's  back  of  all  this  ?"  she  pondered. 

ii 

Blunston  had  got  and,  after  some  debate,  published,  as 
Garcia  noted,  Andy's  ridicule  of  the  censorship ;  got  also  some 
of  Andy's  warnings,  and  shared,  in  consequence,  his  fears — 
when  the  longer  memorandum  came  safely  through,  Blun 
ston  replied: 

"This  is  war,  and  because  all  wars  are  bad,  even  the  best  of 
wars  must  have  its  errors.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a  limit  be 
yond  which  errors  are  inexcusable.  Use  your  judgment,  do 
your  duty  and  fear  nobody." 

Then,  deep  in  the  winter,  came  some  work  from  Andy  so 
well  written  that  Blunston's  conscience  would  no  longer  rest. 
He  signed  to  it  Andy's  own  name.  He  confessed  to  his  papers, 


VICTORIOUS  189 

and  his  papers  not  only  printed  the  articles  under  the  new 
signature,  but  wrote  him  that  they  would  continue  the  service. 

The  Spy  reprinted  the  first  of  the  signed  articles  and  headed 
it  "Honor  to  a  Son  of  Amerieus."  The  next  day,  Mrs.  Boling- 
broke  stepped  out  of  her  limousine  before  Sarah  Brown's  house 
and  rang  the  bell. 

Sarah  had  been  in  the  kitchen.  She  opened  the  door  with 
one  hand  and  untied  her  apron  with  the  other. 

Mrs.  Ralph  nodded.  "Hello,  Sarah,"  she  said.  She 
spoke  as  if  their  last  meeting  had  never  occurred.  "That's 
fine  work  Andy's  doing  in  France." 

If  her  involuntary  hostess  was  surprised,  she  gave  no  sign 
of  it.  If  she  saw  the  expectation  that  she  would  admit  her 
caller,  she  gave  no  sign  of  that.  She  stood  there,  a  tall  drab 
figure,  her  apron  in  her  kitchen-damp  hands,  and  yet  a  figure 
newly  dignified. 

"Thank  you,"  she  said. 

Mrs.  Ralph  wondered  whether  she  ought  to  feel  nettled. 
"We  think  you  ought  to  be  doing  as  much  here  as  your  son  is 
over  there,"  she  said.  "We  think  you  ought  to  come  into  the 
Red  Cross." 

Sarah  said :    "Thank  you." 

It  was  inconceivable !  "We'd  be  glad  to  have  you,"  said  Mrs. 
Ralph. 

"Thank  you,"  said  Sarah. 

Mrs.  Ralph's  temper  was  never  long.  She  first  fell  back  a 
step  in  amazement  and  then  came  forward  a  step  in  rising 
anger. 

"Do  you  mean  you'll  come,  or  do  you  mean  you  won't?" 

Sarah  stood  firm.    Her  voice  did  not  rise  and  did  not  falter. 

"I  mean  I'll  do  what  work  I  can  outside  and  send  it  in,  but 
I  won't  join.  And  I  mean  I'm  much  obliged  to  you." 

She  began  to  readjust  her  apron.  It  was  a  token  of  dis 
missal  that  Mrs.  Ralph,  for  the  first  time  in  a  long  while  at  a 
loss  for  words,  accepted  in  silence. 


190  VICTORIOUS 

in 

That  was  the  day  when,  while  'Andy's  credit  in  the  town 
temporarily  remounted,  the  parents  of  Harry  Kurtz,  the  lad 
who  had  hated  to  leave  his  terrier  Fan  behind,  learned  that  he 
was  in  France.  They  learned  it  by  a  telegram  from  Wash 
ington: 

"Deeply  regret  to  inform  you  Private  Henry  C.  Kurtz,  G 
Company  — th  Machine-Gun  Battalion,  reported  seriously 
wounded  in  action,  January  30th." 

It  was  the  first  message  of  the  kind  to  come  to  the  little 
town.  It  was  the  forerunner  of  many  that  soon  were  changing 
service-stars  to  gold. 

Sarah  went  to  Mrs.  Kurtz,  and  Mrs.  Kurtz  wept  brokenly 
on  Sarah's  thin  shoulder. 

"If  he  only  could  'a'  gone  for  a  correspondent  like- your 
Andy,"  sobbed  Mrs.  Kurtz,  "our  Harry'd  'a'  been  safe  now !" 

IV 

Miss  Hattie  was  just  then  calling  on  Blunston's  cousins — 
black-haired  Cousin  Flora,  red-haired  Cousin  Mollie  and  red- 
haired  Cousin  Becky — and  Andrew  Blunston  was  there.  Law 
yer  Dickey  had  happened  in,  and  the  girls'  father  beckoned 
him  and  Andrew  Blunston  out  of  the  great  hall  and  into  the 
dining-room,  with  some  smiling  excuse  about  "estate  busi 
ness"  that  did  not  at  all  deceive  Miss  Hattie,  whose  pricked 
ears  presently  caught  the  tinkle  of  glass.  When  the  three 
men  reappeared,  she  cocked  her  head  at  the  youngest. 

"Andrew,"  she  said,  "your  namesake's  doing  well  these 
days,  isn't  he?" 

Blunston  was  lighting  a  cigarette.  He  looked  at  its  end  as 
he  answered: 

"Yes.    It's  very  gratifying  when  you  come  to  think.    .    .    ." 

Had  he  intended  to  finish,  he  never  would  have  done  so, 
for  Miss  Hattie,  embracing  herself  and  responding  to  the  ca 
ress  with  a  coquettish  leer,  turned  on  Mr.  Dickey. 


VICTOBIOUS  191 

"Jim,  I  guess  that  old  Tidd  house  Ralph  Bolingbroke  lent 
his  wife's  Eed  Cross  must  be  worth  quite  a  little  money." 

Lawyer  Dickey  had  known  Miss  Hattie  all  his  life  and  so 
knew  the  impossibility  of  knowing  her  goal  before  her  ar 
rival.  Nevertheless,  he  suspected  here  some  belittling  of 
Ralph's  generosity,  and,  though  he  disliked  the  Bolingbrokes 
even  more  than  he  disliked  Hattie  Lloyd,  he  decided  to  de 
fend  the  absent  enemy  for  the  sake  of  frustrating  the  enemy 
present : 

"Just  after  Ralph  turned  it  over,  there  was  a  fellow  came 
to  town  from  a  five-and-ten-cent  store  syndicate  and  offered 
him  ten  thousand  for  it,  and  Ralph  said  he  wouldn't  sell  BO 
long's  it  could  be  useful  to  the  Red  Cross.'5 

"Hum,"  said  Miss  Hattie.  "Ralph  told  you  so  himself,  I 
suppose  ?" 

The  girls  laughed. 

"Of  course  he  did,"  said  red-haired  Cousin  Becky;  "Ralph 
never  hides  his  light  under  a  bushel." 

"I  know  that,"  Mr.  Dickey  admitted,  "but  it  was  the  truth. 
The  stores'  agent  retained  me  to  keep  an  eye  on  it  for  him." 

"Well,  if  he's  going  to  get  the  money  sooner  or  later  any 
how,  all  Ralph  loses  is  the  interest,"  said  Miss  Hattie.  The 
reflection  was  worth  another  hug.  '"What  makes  me  think  of 
it :  Sarah  Brown  did  a  queer  thing  a  while  ago ;  she  asked  me 
if  her  fathered  ever  lived  in  that  house." 

"And  you  couldn't  remember?"  asked  black-haired  Cousin 
Flora. 

"Well,  no,"  said  Miss  Hattie  shamefacedly,  "I  couldn't." 

"Why,  Miss  Hattie" — it  wag  red-haired  Cousin  Mollie  this 
time — "I  thought  you  never  forgot  anything!" 

"Don't,  generally." 

The  girls'  father  had  to  rescue  their  guest.  "Joe  Tol- 
lens?"  said  he.  "Seems  to  me  he  did  live  there,  right  after 
he  was  married,  for  a  couple  of  years,  till  his  father  died. 
How  about  that,  Jim  ?" 

Mr.  Dickey  was  uncertain.  Wasn't  it  old  Doctor  Ireland — 
or  the  Kents?  He  rather  thought  it  was  the  Kents.  Doctor 
Ireland's  brother  John  built-  it,  somewhere  in  the  'forties,  but 


192  VICTORIOUS 

he  didn't  live  there  very  many  years,  and  there  was  surely  a 
better  sort  of  owner  than  the  Tidds  before  it  fell  to  their  level. 

"It  was  Joe  Tollens,"  said  old  Mr.  Blunston.  "I  remem 
ber  now.  I  remember  one  evening  he  had  a  party  there,  and 
somebody  made  a  punch  out  of  Jamaica  rum  from  Philadel 
phia.  Who  was  that,  now?" 

"Joe  Tollens  himself,"  said  the  girls'  mother.  "I  remember 
the  time  you  mean." 

"But  how  did  Ealph  Bolingbroke  get  it?"  Miss  Hattie  de 
manded. 

"I  don't  recollect."  Mr.  Dickey  was  tiring  of  the  subject: 
he  differed  from  most  people  of  his  age  by  a  lack  of  interest 
in  things  gone  by.  "It  hasn't  come  to  the  point  of  looking  up 
the  deeds — and  won't  while  this  war  lasts.  It  was  his  father 
that  bought  it,  but  I  don't  think  he  paid  cash,  for  nobody  ever 
heard  of  the  Tidds  getting  ready  money  from  anybody;  their 
only  legal  tender  was  promissory  notes,  and  they  generally 
went  to  protest."  Mr.  Dickey  had  several  of  them  in  his  office- 
safe  to  that  day,  but  he  did  not  say  so. 

"Hum,"  said  Miss  Hattie.  She  was  hugging  herself  warm 
preparatory  to  departure.  "It  might  be  worth  looking  up, 
mightn't  it?" 


CHAPTEE  XIV 

SHOWING,  AMONG  DIVERSE  STARTLING  MATTERS  OF  IMPORT  TO 
ANDREW  BLUNSTON,  ONE  THAT  SHOULD  LONG  BE  OF  IMPORT 
TO  ALL  HIS  FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:  TO  WIT,  THE  EARLY 
AMERICAN  FRONT 

FORTY-EIGHT  mute  hours  followed  Innis's  threats  to  the 
press-division.  Andy  and  Evans  took  the  precaution  of  mak 
ing  numerous  copies  of  their  suspended  stories,  of  which  they 
had  carbons,  and  of  dropping  these  in  out-of-the-way  post- 
boxes  about  the  city,  with  the  hope  that  at  least  one  copy 
would  be  overlooked  by  the  censorship,  going  over  them  with 
the  utmost  care  first  to  see  that  they  in  no  way  could  give  mili 
tary  information  to  the  enemy ;  Innis,  whose  material  was  to 
be  sent,  if  ever,  by  cable,  sat  in  the  Napolitain  and  consumed 
his  heart,  together  with  an  occasional  export  Curasao.  What 
went  on  behind  the  reticent  curtain  of  the  Intelligence  De 
partment,  they  could  only  guess :  they  imagined  telephone- 
conversations  between  the  rue  Ste.  Anne  and  Chaumont,  un- 
derseas  messages  to  Washington. 

Further  word  of  the  wounded  Chrissly,  Andy,  try  as  he  did, 
could  not  secure.  He  endeavored  to  go  about  his  work  as 
usual,  wrote  some  unobjectionable  matter,  which,  evading 
Garcia,  he  turned  in  after  the  old  fashion,  and  he  sent  off 
to  his  mother  a  letter  that  he  was  at  pains  to  make  sanguine. 
He  especially  noted  a  queer  little  man  with  a  cap  down  over 
his  eyes  and  a  scornful  mouth,  who  sat  on  a  doorstep  across 
the  rue  de  Valois — Andy  saw  him  at  each  coming-out  and 
going-in — and  who  seemed  uncompromisingly  antagonistic  to 
the  American  uniform. 

Two  days  passed  thus.  Then  the  Paris  edition  of  the  Few 
York  Hewld  and,  presently,  the  newspapers  at  home,  pub 
lished  this : 

193 


194  VICTOEIOUS 

"American  officers  have  been  authorized  to  state  that  the 
sector  of  the  Western  Front  taken  over  by  the  United  States 
Army  is  in  Lorraine,  to  the  northwest  of  Toul." 

Officially,  that  was  all. 

"And  they  call  it  a  communique !"  Evans  snorted. 

"You'll  notice  it  is  so  worded  as  to  let  the  American  people 
think  we've  been  there  since  November,"  said  Innis. 

"Anyhow,"  said  Andy,  "you've  forced  them  to  release  our 
stories." 

II 

On  his  way  from  Evans  and  Innis  at  the  Napolitain  to  his 
Palais  Eoyal  garret,  Andy,  for  a  moment,  could  have  sworn 
that  one  of  the  two  figures  walking  a  hundred  yards  ahead  of 
him  was  Sylvia.  Only  the  absence  of  Tac  at  first  made  him 
uncertain;  then  he  dismissed  the  surmise  as  unworthy  when 
he  noticed,  from  a  turn  of  his  body,  that  the  man  was  Louis 
Garcia.  He  felt  his  face  flush  as  he  saw  Garcia,  rather  too 
solicitously  insist  on  helping  his  companion  into  a  taxi-cab. 

Hie  mind  was  all  on  the  communique,  but  had  he  been  able 
to  catch  a  glimpse  into  that  cab  and  listen  to  the  conversation 
that  followed,  he  would  have  had  strange  and  new  misgivings. 
For  this  was  what  he  would  have  heard : 

"Of  course  I'm  going  to  see  you  to  your  hotel.  Think  of 
me  meeting  you  here  in  Paris !" 

"It  was  nice  of  you  to  hurry  the  pass :  I'd  have  had  to  wait 
hours." 

"You  can  do  something  in  return  if  you  will." 

The  young  woman  studied  Garcia's  face.  He  took  her 
steady  look  for  acquiescence. 

"You're  a  clever  girl — as  well  as  a  pretty  one,  Miss  Eae- 
burn."  Garcia  paused.  Finally  he  said:  "You  must  be  meet 
ing  a  good  many  of  these  war-correspondents  we  have  to  put 
up  with." 

"Is  that  the  way  you  feel  about  them  ?"  she  laughed. 

"If  you  only  knew  what  lengths  they  go  to,  every  one  of 
them,  to  get  around  our  regulations !  They  look  like  a  bunch 


VICTOKIOUS  195 

of  enlisted  men,  I  know,  but  the  way  they  behave,  and  talk, 
you'd  think  they  were  all  field-marshals." 

"I've  met  only  one  or  two  of  them." 

"You  know  young  Brown:  A.  McK.  Brown.  I  saw  you 
talking  to  him  one  day,  only  I  wasn't  quite  sure  it  was  you 
till  I  saw  your  name  registered  on  our  list. — I  can  trust  you, 
can't  I?" 

"I've  always  been  considered  trustworthy,  Mr.  Garcia." 

"I'll  make  it  worth  your  while.  And  just  between  ourselves, 
Brown's  a  trouble-maker.  I'll  be  glad  if — well,  if  you'd  keep 
an  eye  on  him — and  any  of  the  other  correspondents,  too,  for 
that  matter — and  report  to  me  once  in  a  while  as  to  what 
they're  up  to."  Her  clear  gaze  made  him  add:  "You'd  be 
doing  a  real  service  to  your  country,  you  know." 

As  he  helped  her  out  of  the  cab,  he  said : 

"How  about  taking  dinner  with  me  sometime  soon?" 

"I'm  awfully  busy—" 

"Here,  too.  Still,  how  about  next  Wednesday  night,  just  a 
nice  quiet  dinner  at  Paillard's?" 

"It  sounds  lovely  —  but  I  daren't  accept.  I'm  going  on 
tour  any  day  now.  Thank  you  ever  so  much  just  the  same." 

"Well,  some  night — soon." 

"Perhaps."  She  seemed  in  a  hurry  to  be  gone :  "I  left  my 
dog  with  the  concierge,  and  I  think  he  hears  me." 

"I  don't  see  why  all  actresses  have  to  have  dogs,"  Garcia 
complained;  but  he  added:  "Don't  forget  you're  in  my  em 
ployment  now." 

"Oh,  I'll  come  and  report,"  she  laughed,  as  she  ran  up  the 
steps. 

"About  that  dinner?" 

"I'll  let  you  know  sometime  if  I'm  free !" 

"That's  a  promise,"  he  called,  as  he  closed  the  door  of  the 
cab. 

in 

The  Americans  were  "in" ;  but  were  they  there  in  strength 
enough  to  matter?  On  the  afternoon  of  the  day  on  which 
the  evasive  communique  appeared,  Andy  heard  news  that 


196  VICTOKIOTJS 

compelled  him  to  doubt.  Evans  took  him  to  a  government 
office  and  introduced  him  to  a  grave  French  official.  This 
was  a  personage  that  spoke  with  authority  not  a  little  en 
hanced,  in  Andy's  eyes,  by  the  ribbon  of  the  Legion  of  Honor 
and  a  vast  black  beard  out  of  which  came  a  statement  precise 
and  prepared: 

"You  must  tell  your  people  to  be  quick.  "We  must  have 
more  men.  There  is  no  more  time  to  be  spared.  We  are  in 
possession  of  important  information:  somewhat  delayed  by 
the  breaks  in  the  Russian  negotiations,  but  now  hurried  by 
the  internal  unrest  in  Austria,  which  has  informed  Berlin 
that  it  can  not  fight  a  year  longer,  the  great  offensive  of  the 
Central  Empires  will  surely  be  launched  before  the  end  of 
March.  "We  shall  be  attacked  at  three  points:  two  on  the 
French  and  one  on  the  British  front.  Paris  and  the  channel- 
ports  and  a  rupture  of  the  liaison  between  the  French  and 
British  lines  will  be  the  objectives.  I  tell  you  in  confidence, 
gentlemen,  that  unless  we  have  reenforcements  for  a  counter- 
offensive,  the  war  will  be  lost." 

"If  we  say  that  in  our  papers — "  began  Andy. 

"You  must  not  put  the  words  in  my  mouth." 

"But  if  we  can  say  it — " 

"If  you  can  do  anything  to  make  your  country  hurry  troops 
Here — if  you  can  do  anything  to  end  the  delays,  you  may 
save  us.  If  not — "  He  flung  his  arms  wide  and  concluded  the 
interview. 

IV 

Sylvia,  when  Andy  at  last  permitted  himself  to  see  her, 
was  a  sober  nun  in  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  uniform.  He  called  of  an 
evening  at  her  hotel,  and  she  met  him  in  a  gray-blue  skirt 
and  a  dark  green  cape  and  a  hat  of  gray-blue  with  the  in 
verted  triangle  of  her  order  upon  it.  Only  rebellious  tendrils 
of  her  hair,  escaped  and  shining  against  the  hat-brim,  denied 
her  severity. 

"How  did  it  go?  Of  course  it  was  a  success  and  of  course 
you  weren't  afraid  of  your  audiences  and  of  course 


VICTORIOUS  197 

they  thought  you  were  just  great/'  Andy  was  sure  of  all  that. 
"Gee.,  but  I  wish  I  could  have  seen  you  there  I" 

The  tour  had  been  fortunate  and  another  was  soon  to  fol 
low,  but  Sylvia  was  in  serious  mood.  Her  eyes  were  not  only 
beautiful :  they  had  been  made  to  use,  and  she  had  used  them. 
She  was  enthusiastic  when  she  spoke  of  the  enlisted  men  in 
the  camp ;  she  made  no  mention  of  Garcia,  or  of  her  encounter 
with  him ;  but  when  she  spoke  of  the  tardiness  of  the  officials 
in  charge  of  the  American  effort,  she  despaired. 

"We've  only  a  handful,"  she  said.  "Nobody  at  home  could 
imagine  how  dreadful  it  is.  And  I  was  at  Brest — oh,  our  navy 
is  wonderful:  they're  doing  wonders,  and  the  French  love 
them — but  what  sort  of  troops  do  you  suppose  are  coming 
over  in  the  transports?  Whole  companies  of  lens-grinders 
and  laundrymen.  In  the  hotel  I  heard  an  American  captain 
talking  to  a  French  colonel :  the  captain  said  he  ran  a  laun 
dry  in  New  York  and  was  sent  to  run  one  here." 

She  was  never  more  lovely  than  when  in  distress.  The 
slightly  drawn-together  brows  were  dark  against  her  white 
skin;  a  pulse  beat  in  her  temples;  her  red  mouth  drooped  a 
little  and  her  gaze  was  sorrowful.  He  felt  that  this  hotel- 
parlor  was  henceforth  to  be  a  holy  place. 

"I've  written  the  truth,"  he  said. 

He  told  her  what  had  happened,  she  listening  with  hands 
clasped,  her  supple  body  bent  toward  him  beside  her.  When, 
he  had  finished: 

"Don't  mind  about  their  rules,"  she  said,  with  splendid 
feminine  scorn  of  legal  prohibitions:  "Get  all  that  home." 

"It's  gone,"  said  Andy.  He  was  looking  between  her  eyes. 
Without  knowing  that  they  said  it,  his  fascinated  lips  added : 
"You're  the  most  wonderful  girl  in  all  the  world." 

She  drew  back;  she  was  more  serious  than  ever  now. 
"Don't  call  me  that.  I'm  not  at  all  wonderful,  and  as  for 
being  young,  if  I  wasn't  old  enough  before,  this  war  is  mak 
ing  an  old  woman  of  me."  Then  she  gave  him  one  of  her 
sudden  smiles  that  were  always  like  sunshine  after  rain. 
"Would  you  like  to  go  to  the  British  front?"  she  asked. 


198  VICTOKIOUS 

"Would  he  like  it !  Andy's  freckles  were  drowned  in  a  crim 
soned  delight :  "Gee,  can  you  fix  it  for  me  ?" 

She  could;  she  had.  She  had  met,  if  appeared,  a  former 
stage-friend,  English-born  and  now  turned  Waac,  who  had 
an  uncle  on  one  of  the  British  staffs,  and  this  uncle  had  ar 
ranged  everything.  Andy  was  to  go  in  a  fortnight.  He  was 
to  go  to  the  British  Embassy  and  sign  a  lot  of  papers. 

He  fell  into  raptures  of  expectation  and  talked  until  all 
hours.  He  left  his  goddess  more  her  worshipper  than  ever 
and  more  than  ever  resolved  to  pursue  his  thorny  bypath  of 
duty  to  America  all  the  way  to  the  general  goal.  He  came 
out  of  the  hotel  with  his  head  so  far  among  the  stars  that  he 
nearly  fell  over  some  earth-crawling  creature  who  looked  as 
If  he  might  be  the  sneering  observer  of  the  rue  de  Valois. 


Evans  had  suggested  that  Andy  might  find  trace  of  his 
wounded  friend  through  the  American  Eed  Cross,  which  was 
establishing  a  bureau  for  just  such  inquiries,  and  the  lad  was 
about  to  go  to  the  headquarters  in  the  Place  de  la  Concorde 
next  morning  when  he  was  further  urged  there  by  a  letter 
from  America.  It  had  come  all  the  long  road  from  Pennsyl 
vania  and  lay  at  last  upon  his  crowded  desk  in  Paris — a  few 
laborious  lines  in  pencil  upon  a  single  sheet  of  blue-ruled 
pulp  paper,  torn  from  a  note-pad.  It  was  a  timid  little  let 
ter,  hesitant,  imperfectly  articulate.  Andy  could  not  look  at 
it  without  wondering  how  it  had  ever  braved  the  journey  and 
how  it  had  ever  survived: 

"Dear  Sir,"  it  ran,  "I  take  up  my  pen  in  good  health  hop 
ing  it  finds  you  the  same  to  ast  a  favor  because  you  remember 
our  Harry.  He  was  in  C.  Co.,  — th  inft.  when  he  enlisted  and 
wrote  often  at  first  from  camp  but  maybe  he's  in  France  now 
anyhow  he  doesn't  any  more.  He  was  always  a  good  boy  and 
wrote  regular,  Mr.  Brown,  and  we  are  worried  and  can't  find 
out.  Will  kindly  ast  you  can  you  do  anything  to  find  out  which 


VICTOBIOUS  199 

we  will  be  very  grateful  for.  You  know  his  name  is  Henry  C. 
and  then  the  same  as  mine.  He  was  always  a  good  boy. 

"Yours  truly, 

"MRS.  KURTZ. 

"p.  g. — Have  just  got  word  wounded  but  not  how  bad. 
Please  Mr.  Brown  do  something." 

Andy  had  to  blink  a  little  as  he  read  it.  He  seemed  to  see 
the  old  familiar  town  again,  one  street  lined  by  pleasant  two- 
story  frame  houses,  and  in  one  of  them,  exactly  like  the  oth 
ers,  a  tiny  parlor:  the  bunch  of  immortelles  under  glass  on 
the  mantelpiece,  the  crayon-portraits  on  the  wall,  the  marble- 
top  center-table  bearing  a  tremendous  gilt-edged  family-Bible 
interleaved  with  pages  headed  "Marriages/'  "Births"  — 
"Deaths."  And  he  saw  a  woman  at  the  table,  a  woman  in 
appearance  not  unlike  his  own  mother;  there  was  more  gray 
in  her  hair;  her  face  was  angular.  Because  her  hands  were 
stiffened  by  hard  work,  this  woman  held  the  pencil  awk 
wardly.  .  .  . 

VI 

"Well,"  said  a  man  at  a  desk  in  the  Red  Cross  offices — a 
man  with  a  round  face  and  eyes  at  once  businesslike  and 
kindly — "about  Privates  Henry  C.  Kurtz  and  Christian  Shu- 
man.  This  woman  may  have  written  before  the  War  Depart 
ment  could  get  details,  or  the  boy  may  have  been  sent  to  a 
French  hospital  and  lost  track  of." 

To  Andy  it  seemed  incredible  that  this  could  happen  to  a 
soldier  bearing  an  identity-disk;  but  it  appeared  that  the 
suggested  event  was  not  uncommon.  No  army  kept  a  perfect 
record.  Reports  followed  a  man  until  he  was  registered  as 
"Sent  to  Base-Hospital,"  and  then  they  stopped.  Which  of 
the  many  base-hospitals  he  was  directed  toward  it  was  the 
hospital's  business  to  tell,  and  there  were  often  rushes  of 
wounded  so  great  that  record-taking  became  impossible. 

The  man  at  the  desk  went  to  work.  He  gave  orders:  a 
clerk  was  telephoning  to  the  army's  statistical  division;  a 
goggled  stenographer  was  sending  a  telegram  of  inquiry  to 


200  VICTOEIOUS 

the  chaplain  of  Harry's  regiment ;  a  second  stenographer  was 
wiring  every  army  divisional  Bed  Cross  agent  and  every  Red 
Cross  hospital-searcher  in  France. 

"How  long  will  it  take  ?"  asked  Andy. 

"Ten  minutes  or  two  days/'  said  the  man  at  the  desk. 

Andy  hoped  that  it  would  take  only  ten  minutes.  He 
thought  about  Harry's  mother:  she  had  already  waited  long. 
He  thought  of  Chrissly.  .  .  . 

"Of  course/'  said  his  informant,  "if  we  don't  get  an  im 
mediate  reply,  we  wait,  and  then,  after  six  months,  why,  the 
soldier  will  be  reported  as — " 

Andy  did  not  want  to  hear  the  end  of  that  sentence.  He 
tried  to  think  of  something  else.  Presently : 

".  .  .  till  the  government  can  permanently  mark  them, 
the  job's  ours.  We're  having  designs  made  for  a  temporary 
metal-marker  that  can  later  be  removed  and  sent  to  the  sol 
dier's  family." 

What  was  this?  Something  in  his  tone  had  recaptured 
attention. 

"Mark?"  Andy  repeated.   "Mark  what?" 

"Their  graves:  the  graves  of  American  soldiers  that  die 
in  France.  You  see,  they  often  have  to  be  buried  where  they 
fall,  and  the  place  might  be  forgotten,  so  we  mark  it  and  send 
the  family  a  photograph  of  the  grave." 

Andy  recalled  something  that  he  had  seen,  but,  in  the 
manifold  horrors  of  the  time,  scarcely  noticed,  during  his 
latter  visit  to  the  front:  it  was  a  military-cemetery  close  to 
the  front  line ;  the  shells  were  falling  there ;  there  French  and 
American  soldiers  had  been  buried  side  by  side — and,  as  he 
stood  in  the  gateway,  he  saw  bodies  dug  out  and  tossed  aside 
by  explosions.  The  big  shells  were  grave-robbers.  .  .  . 

The  telephone  rang.  Andy's  cicerone  looked  up  from  the 
receiver. 

"Here's  luck,"  he  said.  "Both  of  'em  found.  It  took  us 
just" — he  consulted  his  wrist-watch — "just  forty  minutes. 
Pretty  good  work,  eh?" 

"Where  is  he  ?"  demanded  Andy.  He  thrust  into  his  breast 
pocket  the  letter  from  Harry's  mother. 


VICTORIOUS  201 

"Both  at  base-hospital  No.  — ,  French/'  answered  the  man 
at  the  desk.  "That's  only  an  hour's  ride  out  of  Paris.  Take 
the  first  one  of  our  cars  that's  at  the  door.  The  driver  will 
know  the  roads.  Phone  us  if  we  can  do  anything.  Good-by." 

VII 

Andy  sat  beside  the  chauffeur.  The  Champs  Elysees  was 
only  a  blur  of  bare  trees  and  white-streamered  nourrices  as 
the  car  scorched  along  it.  They  leaped  the  Rond-Point  to  the 
Porte  Maillot.  They  crossed  the  curving  Seine  at  the  He  du 
Pont. 

That  chauffeur  also  knew  something  about  the  work  in 
hand: 

".  .  .  women  go  every  day  ...  see  the  man's  taken  care 
of  ...  write  letters  right  there,  beside  his  bed — letters  to 
his  folks  back  home,  you  know." 

The  car  careened  around  a  sharp  road-turning. 

".  .  .  stay  till  the  man's  dead,"  the  chauffeur  remorselessly 
pursued — "or  till  he  gets  well  .  .  .  writes  a  mother  what 
her  son's  last  words  were  .  .  .  look  up  his  pals  .  .  .  get 
their  stories  about  him  .  .  ." 

The  rush  of  the  wind  would  jerk  the  words  from  his  mouth 
and  fling  them  a  hundred  yards  behind.  The  letter  burned 
in  Andy's  pocket,  against  his  heart. 

The  suburbs  had  given  place  to  villages.  Now  there  fol 
lowed  flashing  stretches  of  open  road.  And  at  last  the  car 
slowed  down.  It  was  only  an  hour's  ride — for  an  express- 
train. 

"The  soldier  Kurtz  is  here.  He  was  shot  through  the  lungs 
in  a  trench-raid.  He  is  strong,  and  we  have  added  to  his 
strength  the  best  that  we  could;  but  now — Monsieur  is  only 
just  in  time,"  said  the  nurse. 

VIII 

One  of  the  beds  was  shut  from  its  neighbors  by  a  pair  of 
screens.  Another  nurse  was  there,  and  a  doctor,  and  from 
something  on  the  bed  a  whisper  came: 


203  VICTORIOUS 

"You're  the  American,  ain't  you?" 

Andy  thought  he  said  "yes."  He  knew  that  the  word  caught 
in  his  throat. 

"An*  you've  come  all  the  way  from  Paris?" 

Andy  answered: 

"I've  come  all  the  way  from  home." 

The  doctor  caught  his  eye.  His  silent  lips  formed  one 
word: 

"Vite!" 

Andy  bent  over  the  bed.  It  was  Harry  Kurtz  who  lay 
there :  a  boy  that  had  been  boy  with  him.  Andy  remembered 
their  days  at  school,  their  days  of  truantage.  They  had  gone 
swimming  together.  There  was  one  winter  night  of  hare-and- 
hounds.  .  .  .  He  had  never  seen  a  finer  face  or  braver  than 
this.  And  never  a  calmer. 

"Gee,  if  it  ain't  Andy  Brown !" 

The  eyes  were  big  with  gratitude. 

"It's  me,  all  right,"  said  Andy. 

Harry  lay  very  still.  The  fingers  of  one  hand  plucked  at 
the  army-blanket  that  covered  the  bed. 

"I  never  guessed  it'd  be  you.  I  ain't  seen  you  since — I 
ain't  seen  you  for  a  long  time." 

Andy  swallowed  a  lump  in  his  throat.  "I  wish  I'd  looked 
you  up  before,"  he  said. 

"That's  all  right."  The  pale  lips  made  the  words  slowly. 
"D'you  remember  my  dawg,  Fan,  Andy  ?  She's  dead.  Andy" 
« — The  wide  calm  eyes  sought  his. — "I'm  goin'  after  her." 

Andy's  answer  was  only  to  produce  that  letter.  Somehow 
he  managed  to  read  to  the  lad  what  the  lad's  mother  had 
written.  Dying,  Harry  gave  him  the  strength  to  read  it  with 
out  faltering. 

When  that  was  over,  Harry  spoke  again;  already  his  voice 
was  perceptibly  weaker. 

"Thanks,"  he  said.  "You'll  give  her  my  love — her  and 
pop?" 

"I'll  cable  it." 

"An'  you'll  explain  why  it  was  I  didn't — write?  You  see, 
I  always  wrote  reg'lar,  an'  I  wouldn't  want  her — to  think — " 


.VICTORIOUS  203 

"She'll  know  to-night,  Harry." 

His  features  relaxed.  He  smiled. 

"Thanks,"  said  Private  Harry  Kurtz.   "So  long." 

IX 

The  Eed  Cross  would  take  charge  of  the  burial,  and  Andy 
would  be  there.  He  caught  the  nurse's  hand. 

" Shuman,"  he  said :  "it's  not  the  same  with  him,  is  it  ?" 

"The  same  ?  I  do  not  understand."  The  nurse  indicated  a 
near-by  door.  "He  is  in  that  ward." 

Andy  brushed  her  aside  and  darted  forward.  He  was 
through  the  doorway;  he  was  in  another  ward,  and  there, 
propped  on  the  first  cot,  a  gaunt  Chrissly  was  vacantly  re 
garding  him. 

"Say,  you're  an  American,  ain't  ?"  asked  Chrissly.  "Well, 
kin  you  speak  French?  If  you  kin,  I  wisht  you'd  let  these 
folks  know  I  want  a  pen  an'  paper  still.  I  been  tryin'  t'  git 
some  fer  more'n  a  week  yet.  I  want  to  write  my  pop  while 
I'm  a  wounded  hero,  an'  I  gotta  hurry,  fer  they're  goin'  to 
make  me  git  up  to-morry  a'ready,  an'  then  I'll  want  to  git 
back  an'  fight."  .  .  . 


From  his  first  sleep  in  that  American  hospital  to  which  he 
had  been  taken,  Chrissly  had  wakened  with  the  sense  that 
some  great  change  was  come  over  the  world.  At  first  he 
thought  it  was  the  pain  from  which  he  suffered,  the  warmth 
of  the  bed,  the  quiet  of  the  vast  room  in  which  he  lay — a 
quiet  wholly  different  from  that  in  his  trench  preceding  the 
barrage.  Then  he  found  himself  repeating: 

Tf  Wie  ojt,  wann  ich  in  Druwel  lin, 

Derik  ich  an  selli  Euh, 
Un  wott,  wann's  nor  Gott's  Wille  war, 

Ich  ging  ihr  schneller  zu — 
Doch  wart  ich  bis  mei  Schtindle  schlagt, 

Nor'd  sag  ich — Welt,  adj'u!" 


204:  VICTORIOUS 

It  had  something  to  do  with  that,  the  change;  in  some 
wonderful  way,  he  was  nearer  home. 

He  remembered  that  he  was  a  soldier,  but  he  remembered 
nothing  of  France  except  the  trench.  He  had  been  in  the 
trench,  and  it  was  cold.  There  was  somebody  with  him.  .  .  . 
And  now  he  was  not  in  the  trench.  .  .  . 

Thinking  made  him  dizzy.   .   .   . 

He  lay  very  still.  .  .  . 

XI 

What  mistake  of  orders  moved  him,  he  was  never  to  learn. 
Some  confusion  there  must  have  been,  for  there  was  much 
confusion  in  those  days — some  mistaken  shuffling  of  the  cards 
that  were  men  in  the  great  game  that  was  war.  When  Chrissly 
returned  again  to  consciousness,  he  was  not  where  he  had 
been :  one  of  a  procession,  he  was  being  carried  out  of  a  rail 
way  train  and  toward  a  long  white  building,  and  his  bearers 
wore  blue-gray  uniforms. 

He  was  taken  into  a  room  already  crowded  with  cots.  Here 
and  there,  soldiers  were  laying  straw  on  the  floor,  and  on 
that  straw  other  soldiers  were  laying  wounded  men.  Sudden 
movements  brought  forth  sharp  cries  of  pain;  something  was 
breathing  stertorously,  with  a  nerve-tearing  sound ;  a  horrible 
odor  of  putrifying  wounds  sickened  him. 

There  came  a  doctor,  who  looked  him  over,  and  asked  ques 
tions  out  of  a  jungle  of  whiskers.  Chrissly  could  not  under 
stand  a  word. 

XII 

"We  was  doin'  a  little  patrollin'.  They  was  three  of  us. 
We  was  crawlin'  on  our  bellies,  tryin'  to  spot  a  listenin'-post. 
They  spotted  us  'fore  we  spotted  them.  That's  how  I  got 
mine.  The  other  two  was  killed." 

It  was  a  man  in  the  next  cot  that  was  talking.  He  was 
talking  to  somebody  on  the  other  side  of  him.  Chrissly  asked : 

"What  fer  place  is  this?" 

His  neighbor  answered  without  moving:  "It's  a  French 
hospital." 


VICTOEIOUS  205 

"French?" 
"Yep." 

"You're  American,  ain't?" 

"Betcher  life." 

Chrissly  thought  it  over.  "Then  why  are  we  in  a  French 
hospital  a'ready  ?  Last  thing  I  knew,  we  was  in  an  American 
hospital  !" 

A  voice  from  beyond,  the  voice  of  the  "other  fellow,"  an 
swered.  "You  can  search  us,"  it  said. 

It  was  here  that  Andy  found  him. 

sin 

He  had  forgotten  Leonie,  but  he  was  vividly  conscious  of 
Minnie  Taylor.  No  effort  of  Andy's  availed  to  restore  the 
broken  piece  of  memory,  and  the  attending  doctor  advised 
against  further  endeavor. 

"You  got  me  mixed  wis  somebody  else,  Brown,"  said 
Chrissly,  and,  when  Andy  would  have  insisted:  "What  we 
know  not  burns  us  not."  His  former  accent  had  returned. 
He  wrote  a  fervent  letter  to  Minnie  and  to  his  home  a  letter 
blurred  with  homesickness. 

When,  in  the  late  afternoon,  Andy  returned  from  Harry 
Kurtz's  hurried  funeral  —  a  funeral  with  a  French  chaplain 
officiating  and  a  squad  of  invalided  French  soldiers,  in  their 
bright  blue  hospital  uniforms,  in  attendance  —  Chrissly  had 
been  officially  located  by  his  own  army.  An  officer  was  there 
and  had  made  the  Amish  man  happy  with  the  suggestion  that 
he  would  perhaps  be  given  leave  and  sent  to  America  to  make 
speeches  for  a  Liberty  Loan  campaign. 


On  Hs  part,  !Andy  Had  time  on  his  Hands  before  the  date 
set  for  his  trip  to  the  British  front,  and  was  resolved  to  visit 
the  Toul  sector  again.  He  wrote  to  Harry  Kurtz's  mother, 
said  good-by  to  Sylvia  and  then,  it  being  impossible  to  secure 
a  pass,  started  away  without  one. 


206  VICTOEIOUS 

He  amazingly  did  not  need  it.  So  far  as  his  experience 
went,  nobody  needed  credentials  to  reach  the  American  front. 
He  went,  by  way  of  Nancy,  to  Toul.  It  was  midnight  when 
his  train  reached  that  city,  then  a  bare  twelve  miles  behind 
the  lines.  At  the  station  nobody  asked  to  see  his  pass,  nobody 
asked  even  for  his  railway -ticket ;  to  the  sentries  at  the  city 
gates  he  gave  no  more  than  a  shouted  "Good  night,"  and,  at 
the  hotel  to  which  he  groped  his  way  through  a  darkened 
town,  he  was  not  required  to  make  so  much  as  the  formal 
registration  that,  throughout  the  rest  of  France  was,  even 
.in  times  of  peace,  exacted  for  the  information  of  the  police. 

Nevertheless,  after  she  had  led  him  through  a  room  in 
which  a  couple  of  officers  were  drinking  Niersteiner,  the  red- 
cheeked  chambermaid  babbled,  as  she  showed  him  to  his  room, 
.of  massacre. 

"Monsieur  will  do  well,"  she  said,  "to  sleep  with  some 
clothes  near  him — warm  clothes — for  the  dirty  Boche  planes 
come  frequently,  and  then  it  is  necessary  to  descend  into  the 
cellars.  Oh,  but  we  have  beautiful  cellars  under  this  hotel, 
but  a  little  damp.  The  sirens  call  so  soon  as  the  enemy 
avions  cross  the  lines:  then  monsieur  will  do  well  to  clothe 
himself.  When  the  onions,  approach  the  town,  the  tocsin 
sounds,  and  then  you  will  at  once  descend.  Take  the  rail 
well  in  the  hand,  for  the  stone  stairs,  monsieur  sees,  are  well 
worn."  .  .  . 

It  seemed  to  Andy  that  he  did  hear  sirens  that  night,  but 
lie  was  too  tired  to  get  up  and  make  certain,  and  the  last 
sound  that  he  could  surely  identify  was  only  a  bang  of  artil 
lery  muffled  by  comfortable  distance. 

xv 

An  overcast  morning  found  the  city  undisturbed;  it  took 
him  to  the  beautiful  cathedral  where  the  relics  of  Toul's  first 
bishop  are  enshrined  and  where  the  devout  have  for  long  years 
implored  that  saint's  good  offices  to  keep  their  countryside 
"safe  from  the  devastations  of  war,"  the  cathedral  whereat 
the  Maid  of  Orleans  was  received  into  the  faith  that  was  one 


VICTOBIOUS  207 

day  to  canonize  her.  Andy  bowed  his  head  before  her  statue 
and  fancied  that  the  armored  figure  resembled  the  figure  of 
some  one  he  knew,  perhaps  a  little  because  he  wanted  it  to 
resemble  her.  It  was  on  coming  from  the  cathedral  that  he 
encountered  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  camion  and  hailed  it.  The  driver 
was  taking  supplies  to  huts  behind  the  front  line ;  that  done, 
he  was  to  carry  tobacco  and  chewing-gum  in  a  pack  on  his 
back  into  the  trenches.  In  return  for  help,  he  would  give 
Andy  a  lift,  and  the  help  Andy  cheerfully  guaranteed. 

The  course  lay  along  what  were,  at  first,  excellent  highroads 
and  through  the  now  familiar,  widely-rolling  country  so 
formed  that  a  village  nestling  on  the  shoulder  of  a  hill  com 
manded  large  miles  of  territory.  The  new  roads,  the  military 
short-cuts  hewn  with  a  Roman  sense  of  time-salvage  tempered 
only  by  the  modern  soldiers'  appreciation  of  strategical  values 
and  twentieth-century  gunfire,  were  of  almost  equal  quality. 
As  apparently  no  ingenuity  of  mortal  man  could  stop 
them  from  being,  were  the  lanes  and  bypaths,  now  ankle-deep 
in  slime  and  again  knee-deep  with  sucking  ooze.  Behind  the 
American  front,  as  in  the  American  camp,  the  heaviest  curse 
of  the  soldiers  was  the  mud — mud  that  took  of  every  step  the 
toll  of  energy  paid  but  by  the  score  on  dry  ground,  g?aj  mud 
that  crept  into  the  boot  and  up  the  leg,  mud  that  entered  the 
food  one  ate  and  caked  in  the  blankets  when  one  rolled  into 
them  at  night. 

"We're  getting  pretty  close  to  things  now,"  said  the  "Y" 
man — he  was  a  grizzled  chap  with  a  cheerful  word  for  every 
soldier  they  passed;  he  had  been,  he  explained,  a  paint-sales 
man  in  Denver.  "Guns  are  getting  kind  of  loud." 

They  were.  In  a  clump  of  woods  a  few  hundred  yards  away, 
which  Andy  remembered  from  his  previous  visit,  German 
shells  were  falling.  They  burst  with  a  tremendous  clatter 
and  sent  into  the  rain-soaked  air  roots  of  trees,  and  branches, 
and  bits  of  rock.  Yet  just  here,  by  the  roadside,  was  a  "Y" 
hut — and  a  woman  in  it. 

She  was  short  and  practical  and  American.  She  had  pieces 
of  court-plaster  on  her  face — useful,  not  ornamental — and 
her  sleeves  were  rolled  high,  and  she  was  washing  dishes  for 


20S  VICTORIOUS 

her  "boys."  She  had  always  been  with  this  division ;  she  had 
"trailed  along  after  it"  from  the  port  at  which  it  landed. 

"Hard  work?"  she  said.  "Of  course,  but  then  just  think 
how  much  harder  work  these  men  are  doing." 

She  jerked  her  tousled  head  toward  the  muddy  soldiers 
that  thronged  about  her.  They  called  her  affectionately  by 
her  Christian  name,  with  the  "Miss"  before  it  that  is  a  con 
cession  to  convention,  and  she  sold  them  cigarettes  and  choco 
late  and  served  them  tea  and  sewed  on  buttons  by  the  very 
gross. 

"And  I've  got  a  daisy  room  to  sleep  in,"  she  told  him. 
"It's  over  there  in  the  village.  A  big  double  bed.  When  I  get 
home,  nights,  the  French  woman  whose  house  it's  in,  always 
has  a  fire  going  for  me,  with  my  nightgown  warming  before 
it,  and  something  hot  to  eat.  I'm  almost  as  well  off  as  I  used 
to  be  in  Passaic,  New  Jersey." 

"She's  got  it,"  said  the  grizzled  "Y"  man  as  he  cranked 
his  motor — "what  you've  got  to  have  to  make  good  in  this 
work  over  here:  the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ.  You've  got  to 
think  of  just  helping,  helping,  helping — and  of  nothing  else. 
And  that's  the  sort  she  is." 

They  plunged  into  the  soggy  woods.  The  ground  was  one 
tremendous  sponge  gorged  with  water.  A  wide  American  rail 
way  ran  up  to  the  outlying  trees,  where  it  met  the  narrow- 
gauge  relic  of  the  French  occupation;  thence,  through  all  the 
hours  that  precede  the  dawn,  long  trains  of  ammunition- 
wagons  daily  crawled.  The  road,  now  empty  save  for  Andy's 
camion,  twisted  agonizedly  among  the  thick  timber  and 
breathless  underbrush.  Shells  fell  every  little  while;  in  a 
gully  lay  a  body,  its  arms  extended.  Andy  thought  that  noth 
ing  could  live  here,  and  yet,  at  a  quick  turn,  they  found  an 
entire  artillery-camp  and  a  band  that  played  Over  There, 
to  which  hundreds  of  soldiers  sang  the  chorus. 

The  afternoon  had  darkened  when  the  lightened  camion 
again  struck  into  the  open  country,  but  a  sign  warned  them 
"Lamps  out  beyond  this  point."  It  was  in  deepening  twilight 
that  they  visited  an  immense  chateau  of  the  fourteenth  cen- 


VICTORIOUS  209 

tury,  still  full  of  old  furniture,  but  housing  several  hundred 
American  men. 

"Ain't  it  a  grand  old  place?"  one  of  them  appealed  to 
Andy.  "An'  they's  a  kind  of  attic,  way  up-stairs,  that's  all 
sealed  up,  an'  they's  vaults  an'  vaults  in  the  big  cellars  sealed 
up,  too,  an'  the  fellows  say  they're  full  o'  pictures,  oil  paint- 
in's  and  things,  what  the  old  masters  done." 

A  more  cynical  soldier,  who  was  standing  near  by,  sniffed. 

"Old  masters?"  said  he.  "More  like  it's  old  brandy. 
Trench  cog-nac  brandy,  that's  what  it  is."  .  .  . 

There  was  night  on  the  road.  How  Andy's  driver  knew 
the  way  without  lights  was  a  riddle ;  for  Andy  it  was  just  pos 
sible  to  make  out  that  the  buildings  which  here  and  there  lined 
it  were  not,  properly  speaking,  buildings  at  all;  were  only 
gaping  ruins  raked  and  reraked  by  a  three  years'  bombard 
ment. 

In  one  such  group  of  ruins  the  camion  drew  up  before  a 
house  in  which  a  single  room  remained  habitable.  An  old 
mother  and  her  daughter  lived  there,  all  that  was  left  of  a 
formerly  prosperous  family  of  farmers.  The  farm  was  now 
in  No  Man's  Land ;  the  father,  two  sons  and  a  younger  daugh 
ter  had  been  killed  by  German  shells  and  were  buried  in  the 
village  churchyard  under  the  crumbling  church-tower;  two 
other  sons  had  fallen  in  the  French  ranks ;  the  young  woman's 
fiance  was  blown  to  bits  in  the  first  attack  on  Verdun,  thirty 
miles  away;  yet,  when  the  government  ordered  the  civilian 
population  of  the  hamlet  to  withdraw,  these  two  begged  to 
be  allowed  to  stay — they  feared  the  outside  world  more  than 
the  Boche  shells — and  somehow  their  prayers  were  granted. 
Among  our  soldiers,  they  were  of  all  the  French  alone  to 
remain. 

"Were  you  here,"  asked  Andy,  "when  the  Germans  came  ?" 

The  older  woman  nodded. 

"Until  they  came,"  she  said.  "Then  we  hid  in  the  woods." 

"You  lived  there?" 

"Lived — after  a  fashion,  monsieur." 

"But  how?" 


210  VICTOEIOUS 

"The  good  God  knows.  We  are  very  thankful  to  be  back 
here,  monsieur" — she  looked  at  the  tottering  walls  of  that 
single  room — "back  here  in  our  home." 

The  American  officers,  the  "Y"  man  said,  were  good  to 
these  people.  There  was  food  from  the  officers'  mess  sent 
them — the  white  bread  of  luxury — and  sometimes  there  was 
money  sent,  too,  though  money  was  of  small  use  out  here, 
except  at  the  "Y"  canteen  in  a  stable  from  which  an  emer 
gency  secretary  had  dug  the  manure  on  the  morning  pre 
vious.  .  .  . 

A  mile  or  more  down  the  road  they  called  on  a  lieutenant. 
His  quarters  were  in  a  not  uncomfortable  cottage. 

"The  kaiser  slept  in  this  room,"  he  laughed.  "I  hope  he 
enjoyed  it  less  than  I  do."  .  .  . 

There  were  no  civilians  now — not  even  old  widows.  As  the 
camion  went  along,  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  but  roofless 
houses,  through  the  blackened  rafters  of  which,  as  the  weather 
cleared,  the  stars  began  to  shine.  The  cottagers  had  gone,  and 
even  their  dogs  were  gone  with  them;  but  the  cats  remained 
and  had  reverted  to  the  wild  state  of  their  first  forefathers 
— it  was  dangerous  to  enter  a  ruin  unprepared  for  attack 
from  one  of  them.  Silence  and  darkness  and  oppression  that 
settle  on  a  place  deserted  and  in  ruin,  but  once  alive  and  pop 
ulous — the  weight  of  these  was  a  weight  that  became  almost 
physically  sensible  as  one  moved  along  that  strip  of  pale  road. 
Over  there — very  close  over  there  now — the  guns  were  roar 
ing,  yet  here  it  seemed  that  they  had  already  done  all  that 
guns  can  do. 

Nearly,  but  not  quite.  Andy  saw,  close  to  the  ground,  a 
thread  of  radiance.  Toward  it  his  companion  conducted  him. 
They  went  down  an  unexpected  flight  of  steps  to  it.  Overhead 
was  a  house  quite  shot  to  pieces.  Underneath  the  guide 
opened  one  curtain  and  then  another  and  so  discovered  a 
vaulted  chamber,  perhaps  fifteen  feet  square,  in  which,  by 
flickering  candlelight,  a  group  of  American  soldiers  were 
crowded  to  hear  a  phonograph  that  was  playing  Sweet  Gen6* 
vieve. 

They  were  fresh  from  the  trenches.     The  horror  of  deatft 


VICTOBIOUS 

was  even  yet  pursuing  them,,  but  they  hent  before  that  phono 
graph  as  if  it  were  some  master  instrument. 

"Say/'  said  one  man,  "did  you  come  in  an  automobile  ?" 

Andy  confessed  as  much. 

"Well,  would  you  mind  givin'  me  some  o'  your  gasoline? 
I  want  it  for  my  graybacks :  they're  gettin'  the  better  o'  me." 

He  knew  all  about  graybacks — from  experience.  "They 
ain't  so  bad  in  the  trenches/'  he  said,  "but  these  here  deserted 
villages  is  full  of  'em." 

As  Andy  got  him  the  gasoline,  the  Germans'  guns  began  to 
direct  their  attention  that  way.  They  could  see  the  shells  fall 
ing  along  the  road  down  which  they  must  soon  proceed.  One 
came  so  close  that  its  explosion  shook  stones  from  the  build 
ing  above  and  sent  them  crashing  over  the  cellar  where  the 
phonograph  was  still  playing  Sweet  Genevieve.  They  had  not 
•wholly  changed  their  direction  when  the  pair  set  out  again. 

Flashes  began  to  come  from  the  other  side  while  the  camion 
purred  along — streaks  of  angry  red — and  there  was  a  rush 
and  whining  in  the  sky  as  of  monsters  closing  on  their  prey. 

One  —  two  —  three  —  four ! 
One  —  two  —  three  —  four ! 
One  —  two  —  three  —  four ! 

"That's  pretty  good,"  said  the  "Y"  man.  "They're  aver 
aging  six  shots  in  about  four  seconds  with  the  hundred-and- 
fifty-fives  to-night." 

"Who  are?"  asked  Andy. 

"We,"  he  answered.    "That's  our  artillery." 

They  had  reached  a  spot  where  there  was  not  even  a  ruin 
to  obstruct  the  view.  From  somewhere  on  the  left  a  great  ball 
of  light  tore  its  way  through  the  canopy  of  darkness.  It  was 
as  if  a  shooting-star  should  fall  from  the  nearer  heavens  in 
a  constricted  arc  and  break  with  sudden  effulgence  on  the 
earth.  It  lit,  for  what  seemed  miles  around,  a  stretch  of 
brown  swamp-land  drawn  away  from  a  pair  of  hunching 
hillocks  and,  beyond  these,  a  little  chain  of  hills — a  study  in 
sepia. 


212  VICTORIOUS 

"Those,"  said  Andy's  chauffeur,  "are  the  American  trenches 
— down  there  in  the  valley.  Hereabouts,  the  Germans  are  on 
the  side  of  the  hills." 

XVI 

Twenty  minutes  thereafter  Andy  was  in  a  front-line 
trench  for  the  second  time  in  his  life  and,  hating  it  as  much 
as  on  the  former  occasion,  was  getting  his  first  night-sight  of 
No  Man's  Land. 

If,  at  this  point,  one  looked  over  the  top,  which  was  a 
dangerous  business,  because,  as  he  was  warned,  "the  Boche 
snipers  were  everlastingly  at  it,"  and  if  one  then  waited  the 
fall  of  a  star-shell  or  the  rise  of  a  rocket,  what  he  saw  was 
much  what  one  might  see  anywhere  along  the  great  line  in 
Prance.  Just  here,  the  horizon  was  blocked  by  dun  hills, 
behind  which  were  the  German  batteries  and  over  which  rose 
the  rain  of  their  shells.  In  front  of  these  hills,  and  some 
times  down  their  sides,  ran  the  enemy  first-line  trenches,  all 
but  invisible  to  any  eye  save  the  eye  military.  Then,  between 
that  line  and  Andy  stretched  a  field  that  was  brown  earth, 
pock-marked  by  craters,  now  shot  bare  of  even  the  hardiest 
vegetation  and  again  rank  with  blood-fed  weeds  rooted  in 
carrion. 

"That's  No  Man's  Land,"  said  one  of  the  soldiers  at  Andy's 
back.  "What  do  you  think  of  it?" 

"It  looks  like  nothing  at  all,"  said  Andy. 

"It  looks  like  hell,"  said  the  soldier.  "And  it  is,"  he  added. 

A  second  soldier  said :  "It  looks  like  the  mountains  in  the 
moon." 

The  men  wanted  to  know  whether  Andy  had  ever  been  in 
their  home-towns,  whether  he  had  any  news  from  "up  the 
line,"  and  when  he  thought  the  war  would  be  over. 

"These  trenches  are  pretty  bad  right  now,"  said  one  sol 
dier,  "and  in  real  wet  weather,  when  you  try  to  sleep, 
you  can  hear  the  water  slosh  every  time  you  turn  over.  But 
you  just  hear  it :  you  don't  feel  it,  after  the  first  day  or  two. 
Yes,  they're  pretty  bad  now,  but  you  had  ought  to  see  them 
when  we  took  them  over." 


VICTORIOUS  213 

They  were  here,  these  men,  for  a  week's  stay.  Then  they 
would  have  a  week  of  "rest"  in  one  of  the  ruined  villages 
through  which  Andy  had  recently  passed.  Once  in  four 
months,  they  were  each  to  have  a  seven  days'  leave. 

"We've  got  more  men  in  the  front  line  than  the  Dutch," 
Andy's  informant  told  him,  "and  yet,  right  here,  you  have 
to  walk  quite  a  ways  between  men;  this  here  barbed  wire  is 
good  enough  to  fill  the  spaces.  The  other  night  a  bunch  of 
us  crawled  over  to  a  German  trench  to  pay  a  little  call,  and 
when  we  got  into  it,  it  was  a  case  of  'nobody  home.'  We  just 
gathered  up  a  few  helmets  and  things  for  souvenirs  and  came 
back." 

"I  guess  ours  is  the  nastiest  work,"  an  engineer  explained, 
with  a  hopeful  eye  on  Andy's  correspondent's  brassard — "espe 
cially  when  we  have  to  go  over  the  top  and  repair  the 
barbed  wire  out  there.  We  have  to  work  in  circles,  so  nobody 
can  wriggle  up  behind  us;  you  see,  the  Boche  have  a  trick 
of  sneaking  on  you  while  you're  stooping  over  a  busted  wire 
and  reaching  around,  pulling  up  your  head  and  cutting  your 
throat.  It  can  be  done  by  one  motion  of  each  hand.  They 
do  it  because  it's  so  quiet;  the  fellow  that  gets  his  is  dead 
before  he  can  holler,  and  then  the  German  can  sneak  on  to  the 
next  man.  The  Boche  send  soldiers  on  the  job  that  have  got 
in  wrong  for  some  little  offense  against  discipline ;  it's  punish 
ment  for  them,  and  they're  armed  only  with  a  knife  and  a 
revolver  and  told  not  to  shoot  unless  they  have  to." 

Andy  learned  that  with  nearly  every  company  of  infantry, 
when  it  was  in  the  trenches,  there  lived  a  lieutenant  of  ar 
tillery.  He  was  a  liaison-officer  and  was  just  as  necessary 
as  the  liaison-officers  that  were  detailed  to  keep  things  smooth 
between  the  allied  armies;  for  the  infantry  preserved  its 
traditional  dread  lest  the  supporting  artillery  "shoot  short," 
and  the  liaison-officer  had  to  be  on  hand  as  a  sort  of  hostage 
and  to  tell  the  doughboys  what  the  big  guns  could  do  for  them. 

One  heard  all  sorts  of  things — even  ghost-stories.  Andy 
listened  with  ears  grown  strangely  credulous.  A  single  room 
of  what  was  once  a  farmhouse  stood,  or  rather  crouched,  out 
there  in  No  Man's  Land.  Recently  some  Americans  had  crept 


214  VICTORIOUS 

to  it  for  observation  purposes.  They  found  a  bundle  of  straw 
on  the  floor.  "This  straw's  warm/'  declared  one  soldier — the 
day  was  cold,  and  his  hand  detected  easily  the  difference  in 
temperature.  "Somebody's  been  here  before  us."  They 
smoothed  the  straw  and  left.  Returning  next  day,  they  found 
that  the  straw  had  been  disturbed  in  their  absence.  Then 
their  French  neighbors  in  the  trenches  told  them  that  the 
house  had  long  been  known  to  be  haunted.  The  superstition 
spread ;  it  was  dissipated  only  when  a  party  of  Americans  went 
out  by  night  to  see  the  ghost  and  found  him  in  the  shape  of 
several  pigs — once  tame,  now  wild — that  had  either  been 
brought  there  when  the  Germans  occupied  that  strip  of  land, 
or  else  survived  from  a  still  earlier  epoch :  the  distant  epoch 
when  the  farmhouse  had  a  farm. 

"Our  barrage  cut  off  a  Boche  raiding-party  a  few  nights 
ago,"  said  this  man,  "and  then  we  turned  our  machine-guns 
on  them.  We'd  killed  a  third  when  the  rest  tried  to  run  in 
and  surrender,  but  one  of  our  lieutenants  just  yelled  to  us  to 
give  it  to  'em,  so  we  kept  the  gun  going  and  wiped  out  the  lot. 
I  guess  we  got  about  three  hundred ;  some  of  the  other  fellows 
say  they  got  four  hundred  the  same  way  a  few  nights  later, 
but  maybe  they  were  just  trying  to  tell  a  big  one.  You  see, 
the  Germans  made  a  mistake  when  they  sent  back  the  first 
two  Americans  they'd  captured — with  their  tongues  cut  out." 

Andy  talked  with  every  one,  from  colonels  down.  He 
leaned  against  the  greasy  ironwork  of  a  cold  field-store  and 
asked  an  amiable  cook  about  food. 

"Food?"  the  cook  repeated.  "Oh,  sometimes  the  fellows 
get  enough  and  sometimes  they  don't.  The  thing's  uneven. 
That's  what's  the  matter — its  unevenness.  I  guess  the  trans 
portation's  to  blame.  There  seems  somehow  to  be  something 
wrong  with  the  War  Department's  tonnage-calculations. 

"Of  course,  them  at  the  bases  are  all  right,  and  of  course 
all  the  hospital-corps  get  theirs — you  never  see  a  hospital- 
orderly  that  doesn't  look  like  a  'We're-advertised-by-our-loving- 
friends'  sign.  But  with  these  line-regiments  it's  different. 
They  work  a  fourteen-hour  day  and  a  seven-day  week,  and 
they  need,  generally  speaking,  more  than  they're  getting. 


VICTOEIOUS  215 

"Taking  the  average,  we  give  them  a  breakfast  of  bread  and 
coffee,  a  dinner  of  slum  or  beans  in  the  middle  of  the  day, 
and  a  supper  of  beans  or,  once  in  a  long  while,  beef. 

"Feeding  ourselves?  Our  army?  Don't  make  me  laugh! 
I  know  where  our  vegetables  come  from — they  come  right  here 
from  France.  Our  preserves  are  put  up  in  American  tin- 
cans,  with  American  sugar,  but  most  of  the  stuff  that's  pre 
served  is  French  stuff.  I  guess  1  ought  to  know. 

"Take  even  the  beef — what  there  is  of  it.  I  haven't  seen 
any  real  U.  S.  beef  since  I  don't  know  when.  For  even  as 
long  as  up  to  last  week,  we  were  getting  frozen  Argentine  and 
Spanish  beef — we  fellows  that  cook  for  the  line-regiments. 
Then  that  gave  out,  somehow,  and  we  got  French  beef,  not 
frozen.  The  change  from  frozen  to  unfrozen  was  a  little  hard 
on  a  lot  of  the  fellows'  insides." 

Yet  the  morale  was  excellent  and  excellent,  too,  the  disci 
pline.  The  army-relationships  were,  in  many  instances,  estab 
lished  on  a  new  basis. 

"You  can't  consider  as  the  dirt  under  your  feet,"  a  slim 
lieutenant  told  Andy,  "the  soldier  that  jumps  into  the  same 
shell-shelter  with  you  to  get  away  from  the  same  shell." 

Common  dangers  bred  fellow-feeling. 

One  day  German  guns  opened  on  an  American  outlying 
battery  and  cut  off  relief.  They  cut  also  the  connecting  tele 
phone  wire.  An  artillery  private  volunteered  to  go  to  the 
edge  of  the  scene,  carrying  wire  and  instruments,  and  then 
crawl  up  as  close  as  was  necessary  for  a  report.  By  and  by, 
he  began  telephoning  to  the  captain  whom  he  had  left  at  the 
far  end  of  the  wire : 

"I'm  at  the  edge  of  things  and  starting  in." — 

"I'm  getting  there.  The  shells  are  falling  between  me  and 
the  battery,  but  only  about  a  hundred  yards  off." — 

"I'm  in  it  now."— 

"They're  all  right.  I've  fixed  up  the  connection.  What 
shall  I  do  now  ?" 

The  captain's  answer  was  instant : 

"Stay,  or  come  back — whichever's  safer.  And  be  sure  to 
take  good  care  of  yourself." 


216  VICTORIOUS 

XVII 

Good  or  bad,  it  was  democracy  in  arms.  Somehow, 
Andy's  heart  cried  out  to  him,  all  the  way  back  to  Paris :  If 
only  the  Germans  would  give  us  time ! 


CHAPTER  XV 

WHEEEIN  THE  DRAGON  SWALLOWS  THE  SUN 

ANDY  returned  to  Paris.  He  reached  the  Gare  de  FEst  and 
passed  through  the  crowd  of  waiting  women  at  the  barrier,  in 
midafternoon. 

He  had  seen  nothing  of  the  reporters  stationed  at  the  camp, 
and,  heing  hungry  for  talk  with  his  kind,  he  tried,  before  go 
ing  home,  to  find  Evans  and  Innis.  There  was,  however,  no 
trace  of  them  about  their  usual  haunts :  Andy,  anxious  to  un 
burden  himself  of  what  he  had  seen,  went  to  the  office  of  the 
French  official  that  had  warned  him  of  just  how  desperate 
matters  were. 

He  sat  in  a  third-floor  room  overlooking  a  little  garden  and 
the  Cours-la-Eeine.  Across  the  river,  long  lean  clouds  of 
gray  were  racing,  like  charging  legions,  toward  the  meager 
sunshine.  They  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  massing  forces  of 
the  enemy  of  which  his  host  told  him. 

"You  have  done  what  you  could,"  that  official  concluded : 
"You  and  the  other  journalists  of  whom  I  have  made  confi 
dants.  You  have  sent  to  your  country  the  word  that  she  must 
make  haste,  that  what  we,  exhausted,  must  have  is  men.  You 
have  risked  much  to  do  this;  more  you  can  not  do.  On  our 
part,  we  are  bringing  what  pressure  we  dare  to  make  your 
commanders  see  how  they  must  allow  all  their  troops  to 
fight  at  once,  and  under  us  or  the  British.  Your  secretary  of 
war  is  even  now  in  London ;  there  Mr.  Lloyd  George  says  to 
him  what  I  say  to  him.  All  of  us  together,  perhaps  we  may 
prevail;  yet  I  tell  you  again  that,  unless  we  do  prevail,  this 
war  is  lost." 

TEe  muddle  was  too  much.    Andy  choked  a  sob. 

"I  wish  I  could  fight,"  he  said.  "I  wish — oh,  I  wish  I  were 

•217 


218  VICTORIOUS 

a  million  men!  They  told  me  I  had  something  the  matter 
with  my  heart.  I  don't  believe  there's  anything  wrong  with 
my  heart.  I  wish  I  could  fight !" 

In  the  next  room  a  telephone-bell  tinkled  shrilly. 

Andy's  host  smiled.  "A  few  of  us  must  do  harder  things 
than  fight/'  said  he.  "You  have  had  to  incur  the  enmity  of 
some  of  your  own  people.  Before  I  asked  it  of  you.,  I  am  in 
formed,  you  had  gone  the  way  that,  later,  I  urged  you  to  go. 
If  that  avails,  France  will  not  forget  you  and  your  brave  col 
leagues  ;  if  it  does  not  avail,  you  will  know  that,  though  every 
American  journalist  in  France  joined  the  colors,  it  would  not 
have  helped  at  all — and  alas,  you  can  not  be  a  million  men !" 

There  was  a  sound  of  excited  voices  in  the  next  room,  but 
Andy,  so  young  as  to  be  just  then  chiefly  concerned  with  him 
self,  scarcely  heard  it.  He  walked  rapidly  to  the  window ;  he 
was  afraid  to  let  his  face  be  seen. 

"I  know,"  he  answered  his  host;  "but  I'm  thinking — I'm 
kind  of  thinking  about  my  own  soul." 

The  door  to  the  next  room  opened,  and  a  whispered  message 
came  through. 

"A  moment,"  said  the  personage.    "You  will  pardon  me?" 

Without  turning,  Andy  nodded.  He  knew  that  he  was  left 
alone,  and  that  was  relief.  He  stood  there,  watching  the  gal 
loping  clouds  that  mounted,  that  leaped,  toward  the  frightened 
sun.  He  stood  there  for  some  minutes. 

Then  he  felt  on  his  shoulder  the  hand  of  the  returned  offi 
cer,  wheeled  and  found  himself  looking  into  a  face  from  which 
every  vestige  of  color  had  fled.  Out  of  stiffened  lips,  the  man 
was  speaking: 

"It  has  come,"  he  was  saying:  "the  great  offensive.  They 
are  attacking  on  a  seventy-five-mile  front." 

II 

Half  an  hour  later,  he  was  before  a  popular  cafe.  The 
pavement-tables  were  crowded  with  their  usual  guests :  officers 
that  listened  to  the  chatter  of  women,  men  of  business  that 
talked  trade  to  other  men  of  business.  None  of  them  knew. 


VICTORIOUS  219 

'Andy  sat  down  and  bought  the  latest  papers,  but  there  were 
in  them  no  tidings  of  the  thing  he  knew  to  be  happening.  The 
clouds  had  achieved  the  zenith  and  were  charging  the  western 
horizon,  the  oppressive  atmosphere  seemed  big  with  the  por 
tentous  event,  and  yet,  of  all  the  people  about  him,  Andy 
must  have  been  the  only  one  aware  of  what  impended.  He 
was  a  helpless  anthropomorphic  god,  knowing  and  grieving 
for  his  ignorant  people,  yet  impotent  to  warn  them. 

Garcia  was  of  these  people :  Garcia  and  the  impudent  Jac 
quette.  Andy,  as  he  tossed  aside  his  third  newspaper,  saw 
them  at  a  near-by  table,  but  the  somber  lieutenant  might  have 
been  none  the  wiser  had  not  his  black-haired  slip  of  an  Egeria 
willed  otherwise.  She  gave  Andy  a  glad  nod  and  then,  with 
a  vermilion  smile  of  malicious  mirth,  called  Garcia's  atten 
tion  to  the  correspondent. 

Garcia  nodded  sulkily.  He  was  about  to  resume  his  con 
versation  with  Jacquette  when  he  seemed  to  remember  some 
thing.  He  stood  up  and  began  to  edge  his  way  toward  Andy. 

"Brown/*  he  said,  "there's  something  I  want  to  see  you 
about—" 

in 

Andy  staggered  to  his  feet,  with  the  crash  of  the  explosion 
still  deafening  him.  He  knew,  for  a  moment,  only  that  some 
thing  had  fallen  from  heaven  and  burst  and  wrecked  the  cafe. 

Tables  and  people  lay  overturned  amid  a  clutter  of  broken 
glass.  Women  were  shrieking.  The  wide  front  window  of 
the  restaurant  gaped  through  jagged  points  of  crystal.  The 
officers  and  business  men  lay  on  the  pavement,  tangled  among 
the  bedraggled  skirts  of  their  companions.  The  street  was 
full  of  people  running. 

"Les  avions!"  yelled  somebody. 

"Mais  non!"  retorted  a  soldier,  his  face  covered  with  blood. 
"C'est  un  canon,  ga!" 

Andy,  his  hearing  returning  with  his  other  senses,  reeled 
to  that  mass  of  people  out  of  which  he  saw  rising  the  tousled 
figure  of  Jacquette.  Her  hat  was  awry,  her  hair  streaming. 
Save  that  she  was  pale  under  her  rouge,  she  looked  as  she  had 


220  VICTOBIOUS 

looked  on  the  afternoon  when  he  saw  her  struggling  out  of 
her  lover's  embraces  at  Laperouse.  He  lifted  her  bodily  free. 

"Come  away  I"  he  shouted.    "You  must  get  out  of  this !" 

In  his  excitement,  he  spoke  English,  but  the  circumstances 
would  have  made  any  language  intelligible.  Jacquette  looked 
wildly  about  her. 

"Mais  M.  le  lieutenant !"  she  gasped. 

Then  she  saw  him:  Garcia,  without  a  glance  behind  him, 
was  darting  into  the  crowded  street.  As  well  as  he  could,  he 
began  to  run  away. 

Jacquette  shook  her  little  fists.  "Cochon!"  she  screamed. 
"Quel  soldat!  Quel  gallant!  Cochon!" 

She  turned  to  Andy. 

"Monsieur  is  kind/'  she  said.  "Take  me  away  before  an 
other  bomb  falls.  There  is  an  abri  at  the  corner.  Take  me 
there." 

All  that  part  of  Paris  was  seeking  the  abris.  This  was  a 
Metro  station.  By  the  time  Andy  deposited  her  there,  she 
had  miraculously  repaired  the  recent  damage  to  her  toilette. 
Amid  the  frenzied  outcries  of  her  jostling  neighbors,  who 
concluded  that  this  was  a  daylight  air-raid  and  that  daylight 
raids  on  Paris  were  against  the  rules  of  the  game,  she  raised 
her  voice  and  took  his  hand : 

"I  shall  not  forget.  You  have  perhaps  saved  my  life.  I 
shall  repay." 

IV 

Sylvia  was  not  at  her  hotel,  whither  he  hurried,  and  she 
had  left  the  place  of  her  rehearsals  long  before.  Andy,  un 
able  to  find  her,  walked  the  streets  until  darkness  fell — there 
were  explosions  every  twenty  minutes.  He  dined  at  a  little 
Italian  restaurant  in  the  Passage  Vivienne.  Then  he  read 
the  last  edition  of  the  Temps,  which  said  that  from  an  in 
credible  distance,  a  long-range  German  gun  was  bombarding 
Paris. 

On  his  way  home,  the  siren  sounded.  The  cannonading  of 
the  day  was  to  be  followed  by  an  air-raid  by  night. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

TREATS  OF  LOVE  AMOXG  THE  RUIN'S 

MCGREGOR,  in  his  gilt  sitting-room  at  the  Ritz,  turned 
Sylvia's  card  about  between  his  fingers  and  whistled  softly. 

"Tell  her  to  come  up,"  he  said. 

He  walked  to  one  of  the  many  mirrors  and  straightened  his 
black  bow-tie.  With  a  complacent  hand,  he  smoothed  the  folds 
of  his  dinner-coat  over  the  generous  curves  of  his  torso. 

She  found  him  thus  engaged. 

"Hello,"  he  cried. 

For  her  the  past  days  had  not  been  easy:  there  was  a  se 
ries  of  performances  at  the  Foyers  du  Soldat  within  a  fifty- 
mile  radius  of  Paris,  and  there  was  beginning  another  series 
of  rehearsals.  These,  and  perhaps  something  more,  had  pro 
duced  strain ;  only  last  night,  arrived  home  after  entertaining 
soldiers  at  a  Paris  "Y,"  she  had  burst  into  tears  when  the  icy 
flow  from  both  taps  in  her  tub  reminded  her  that  that  was 
not  the  hotel's  day  for  hot  water:  she  cried  herself  to  sleep. 
And  now  there  had  come  a  letter — 

All  this,  nevertheless,  McGregor  could  not  have  conjectured : 
Sylvia  was  none  to  let  depression  long  continue;  though  her 
even  brows  flew  their  signal  of  perplexity,  she  took  comfort  of 
hope  from  the  higher  artistic  possibilities  evinced  by  the  new 
sketch  that  she  was  rehearsing,  and  in  an  important  message 
received  when,  to  compliment  her  work,  a  great  French  gen 
eral  gave  her  a  confidential  interview  and  thanked  her  for 
what  she  was  doing  in  the  Foyers.  Tried  and  distressed  as  she 
was,  she  bore  a  rekindled  radiance. 

''Well,  this  is  mighty  good  of  you:  to  come  and  see  me." 
McGregor,  as  if  to  demonstrate  the  sincerity  of  his  words, 

221 


222  VICTORIOUS 

held  her  hand  an  instant  longer  than  a  formal  greeting  re 
quires. 

"I  didn't  know" — she  released  her  hand — "whether  it  was 
all  right  to  call  on  you — " 

"I  guess  yes !" 

"But  Andy — Mr.  Brown — happened  to  say  you  lived  here, 
and  there  was  something  I  wanted  your  advice  about." 

"I  guess  I  know  what  that  is,"  McGregor  chuckled:  "My 
advice  is  'Go.' " 

Sylvia's  pucker  deepened.     "I  don't  think  I  understand." 

"Go.  Get  out  of  Paris.  That  wasn't  an  air-raid  to-day :  it 
was  a  gun.  They've  started  the  big  offensive." 

"Oh/'  said  Sylvia.  "Yes,  I  know ;  but  I  wasn't  thinking  of 
leaving." 

"What  ?"  McGregor  could  not  appreciate  such  an  attitude ; 
besides,  he  preferred  his  surmises  to  be  proved  correct.  "But 
you've  got  to.  They  may  have  a  revolution  here — Bolshevik 
or  royalist — anything.  There's  a  good  chance  the  line  won't 
hold :  I've  got  it  straight.  Paris  isn't  a  fit  place  for  a  woman." 

"I'm  not  afraid,"  said  Sylvia. 

"Then  you  ought  to  be.  I'll  go  myself,  if  it  gets  much 
worse.  We're  all  packed  up  and  the  tickets  bought  to  Bor 
deaux."  The  wave  of  his  short  arms  indicated  the  adjoining 
apartment  as  a  veritable  baggage-room. 

"Yes,"  said  Sylvia,  "but  it's  different  with  me.  I  suppose 
you're  just  here  for  yourself.  I'm  under  orders." 

He  drew  up  a  chair,  and  she  took  it. 

"Orders?  What  do  they  amount  to?  You're  not  in  the 
army." 

"I'm  in  the  <Y/" 

"But  the  'Y'  can't  make  you  obey  orders." 

"I  know.   You  see,  that's  just  why  I  have  to  obey  them." 

He  didn't  see  it  at  all.  Sylvia's  eyes  that  told  Andy  of  high 
visions  told  McGregor  only  that  they  were  clear  and  bright ; 
Sylvia's  face,  in  which  Andy  saw  the  reflection  of  all  that  was 
best  in  himself,  showed  McGregor  but  a  pretty,  if  puzzling, 
woman. 


VICTORIOUS  223 

"Then  come  to  this  hotel.  We've  got  the  safest  cellars  in 
Paris  here :  the  man  that  built  the  place" — McGregor  winked 
— "said  he  was  a  Swiss.  I've  been  down  there  nearly  all  after 
noon." 

"I  couldn't  afford  to  change,  and  really" — she  smiled  denial 
of  his  idea  to  the  contrary  and  thanks  for  his  kindly  interest 
— "really,  I'm  not  at  all  scared." 

"Where  are  you  stopping  now?"  he  demanded,  and,  when 
she  had  told  him,  began:  "Look  here,  Miss  Raeburn,  if  you 
need  any  money,  you  know — " 

"Oh,  no!"  Her  protest  almost  brought  her  to  her  feet. 
"It's  the  other  way.  It's  about  sending — some  money  that  I 
came  to  see  you." 

"Any  friend  of  young  Brown's — " 

"No,  really.  Thank  you,  but  I've  got  lots.  I  want  to  send 
some  to  America.  I've  just  been  to  the  American  Express 
Company,  and  there  was  a  letter  there — "  Her  fingers  inter 
laced.  "I  must  send  some  money,  and  I  didn't  read  the  letter 
until  I  got  opposite  this  hotel.  The  express-offices  are  closed 
by  now,  and  I  have  to  rehearse  the  first  thing  in  the  morning 
— and  there's  reason  for  hurry.  So  I  thought  of  you." 

He  said  he  would  be  very  glad  to  attend  to  the  whole  mat 
ter.  Above  their  dark  pouches,  his  hazel  eyes  gazed  at  her 
very  steadily. 

"Just  give  me  the  money,  and  the  name  and  address,"  he 
explained,  "and  I'll  send  you  the  receipt  first  thing  to-mor 
row.  You  want  this  to  go  by  cable,  I  suppose  ?" 

"Why,  yes,"  said  her  lips.  Her  eyes  said:  "How  did  you 
know?" 

It  was  her  eyes  he  answered :  "I  thought  you  would." 

He  showed  her  to  a  desk,  and  she  wrote  a  check  on  her 
Paris  bank.  McGregor  folded  the  bit  of  paper,  and,  without 
a  glance,  put  it  into  a  waistcoat  pocket. 

Reseated,  he  poised  his  gold  pencil  above  a  morocco  mem 
orandum-book. 

For  the  fraction  of  a  second,  he  read  hesitation  in  her  eyes. 
Then,  in  a  lowered  voice,  she  said : 


224:  .VICTORIOUS 

"The  first  name  is  "Ainslee.  The  last  name — the  last  name 
is  the  same  as  mine,  but  spelled  with  a  y  instead  of  an  fe'  : 
K-a-y-b-u-r-n." 

There  was  perhaps  a  slight  tightening  of  McGregor's  lips; 
his  gray  mustache  hinted  at  some  movement  there,  but  his 
face,  as  he  wrote  the  name,  did  not  alter. 

"And  the  address?" 

She  gave  him  a  number  in  St.  Charles  Avenue,  New  Or 
leans. 

"There  you  are,"  he  said,  chuckling.  "You  needn't  bother 
any  more.  It'll  be  in  America  by  two  o'clock  to-morrow  after 
noon.  Now,  I  tell  you  what  you  do :  you  stay  here  and  have 
a  little  dinner  with  me." 

"Oh,  no,  thank  you.    I — couldn't." 

"Any  friend  of  Andy's — "  he  encouraged  her. 

"No.  It's  very  kind  of  you,  and  you're  very  kind  about  the 
money — " 

She  had  remained  standing  after  she  rose  from  the  desk; 
he,  perforce,  rose  also.  "Oh,  that's  all  right,"  he  said. 

The  faintest  of  flushes  mounted  to  her  creamy  cheek. 

"I  know;  I'm  so  sorry,  Mr.  McGregor,  but  I  have  an 
other  engagement:  I  have,  really." 

She  was  final.  He  saw  her  to  the  lift.  Like  a  good  Amer 
ican,  he  used  the  lift  for  descent  as  well  as  ascent  wherever 
Paris  authorities  permitted.  As  the  elevator  slowly  ascended, 
he  said: 

"D'you  ever  hear  the  story  of  the  husband  that  talked  in 
his  sleep,  Miss  Eaeburn  ?  His  wife  heard  him  muttering.  It 
was  near  Easter-time,  and  she'd  been  asking  for  a  hat.  She 
heard  him  say  ' Jennie,'  and  says  she  to  herself:  'That's  me,' 
and  she  listened.  'Jennie,'  she  heard  him  say,  'has  just  got  to 
have  that  new  hat,  even  if  I  have  to  fire  the  second  bookkeeper, 
though  it's  hard,  because  he's  got  the  t-b.,  and  is  the  only  sup 
port  of  his  widowed  mother.'  An'  the  wife,  she  says  to  her 
self:  'He's  just  as  mean  as  he  can  be:  I  don't  believe  he's 
asleep  at  all.'  Married  life's  a  funny  thing,  Miss  Raeburn, 
isn't  it?  Here's  the  elevator  at  last.  Some  day  they'll  wake 
up  and  get  real  American  elevators  over  here.  Sure  you  can't 


VICTORIOUS  226 

stay  to  dinner?  "Well  then,  good-by — and  don't  worry  any 
more  about  the  money  " 

When  he  had  returned  to  his  sitting-room,  he  looked  at  the 
check.  It  was  drawn  for  two  thousand  five  hundred  francs. 

"St.  Charles  Avenue,"  he  reflected.  "That's  a  good  old- 
fashioned  part  of  the  town." 

II 

Her  engagement  was  with  herself  at  the  Theatre  Frangais. 
Here,  as  she  had  done  at  the  Ritz,  she  left  Tac  in  the 
care  of  an  attendant  and  contented  herself  with  a  fauteuil 
d'orcJiestre.  Her  seat,  without  its  war-tax,  cost  her  eight 
francs,  and  the  tip  to  Tac's  guardian  cost  her  ten,  but  the 
chance  to  profit  by  either  expenditure  was  brief.  She  had  not 
heard  the  first  scene  of  Le  Misanthrope  when  the  shriek  of  an 
air-raid  warning  abruptly  ended  the  performance. 

The  house  emptied  with  an  ordered  quickness  eloquent  of 
practice ;  but  Sylvia,  hunting  through  the  crowd  in  the  lobby, 
could  find  no  trace  of  the  man  to  whom  she  had  entrusted  her 
dog.  She  questioned  the  agent  who  stood  stolidly  by  the 
box-office :  he  knew  nothing.  She  sought  to  detain  hurrying 
attendants :  they  shook  her  off.  From  the  street  came  the  long 
yell  of  the  siren,  ear-piercing.  The  crowd,  surging  outward, 
bore  her  with  it. 

Somebody  cried :  "This  is  a  bad  one !  You  know  well  that 
the  offensive  has  begun  I" 

Soldiers  and  civilians,  men  and  women,  made  a  rush  for 
the  doubtful  shelter  of  the  Metro  station  in  the  Place  du 
Palais  Royal.  A  glance  from  the  nearest  stair-top  showed  Syl 
via  that  it  was  filled  to  overflowing.  She  fought  her  way  into 
the  dark  Galerie  d'Orleans.  She  had  no  fear;  she  had  the 
common  sense  to  know  that  to  remain  out-of-doors  during  a 
raid  was  mere  foolhardiness,  and  it  occurred  to  her  that  the 
cellars  of  this  building,  being  old,  must  be  heavily  vaulted. 
Nevertheless,  she  did  not  want  safety  at  the  price  of  Tac,  and 
she  was  about  to  return  to  the  theater  when  there  came  the 
swift  pad  of  running  paws  behind  her,  the  scrape  of  suddenly 


226  VICTORIOUS 

arrested  feet,  and  the  dog  thrust  his  damp  cool  muzzle  into 
her  palm. 

She  hugged  him.  Somehow,  he  had  escaped  his  keeper  and, 
trailing  his  leash,  found  her  out.  Sylvia  seized  the  plaited 
thong,  made  her  way  through  a  narrow  passage  into  the  rue 
de  Valois  and  started  for  Number  43.  Andy  might  have  re 
turned;  he  might  he  there.  Even  were  he  not,  she  could 
doubtless  gain  admission  to  the  cellar  by  declaring  herself 
his  acquaintance. 

She  ran  to  the  last  entrance  before  the  street's  end  at  its 
juncture  with  the  rue  de  Beaujolais.  Tac,  preceding,  ran  into 
and  upset  a  man  that  crouched  there :  the  sky  was  bright,  and 
Sylvia  could  see  that  he  wore  a  cap  pulled  far  down  over  his 
face,  but  before  she  could  apologize,  he  had  leaped  to  his  feet 
and  darted  around  the  corner.  Then  Mme.  Lafon,  Andy's 
concierge,  answered  her  ring  and,  upon  her  explanation,  con 
ducted  her  to  the  cellars. 

Ill 

At  tEat  time,  one  Had  twenty  minutes  between  the  sounding 
of  the  siren  and  the  beginning  of  the  air-barrage :  the  news  of 
the  enemies'  advance  was  flashed  to  Paris  as  soon  as  German 
planes  crossed  the  lines,  and  the  alarm  sounded  forthwith. 
Sylvia's  delay  had,  however,  been  none  too  brief ;  the  sky  rat 
tled  as  she  descended  below-ground,  and  a  little  later  began 
the  reverberation  of  the  bombs. 

The  cellars  of  the  Palais  Royal,  dimly  lit  by  candles  in  im 
provised  sconces  and  already  floating  in  a  faint  haze  of  cig 
arette  smoke,  were  really  a  series  of  deep  and  heavily  vaulted 
tunnels,  with  many  cubicles  opening  off  them,  doubtless  orig 
inally  devised  for  wine-bins.  In  these  cubicles,  furnished  with 
hastily  brought  carpets,  chairs  and  tables,  huddled  wrapped 
figures  like  those  which  line  the  docks  of  a  channel-steamer 
during  a  nasty  crossing:  shop-keepers  of  the  neighborhood, 
well-to-do  bourgeois  and  their  servants,  waiters  and  dishwash 
ers  from  Vefour's,  all  reduced  to  a  common  level  and  all  ex 
changing  opinions  as  if  they  had  been  lifelong  acquaintances. 


VICTORIOUS  227 

In  the  best  corners,  permissionaires  lay  sleeping  among  their 
blankets:  knowing  best  what  bombardments  might  be,  they 
were  the  first  to  seek  shelter.  In  the  cubicle  nearest  the  street, 
a  stout  woman  knelt  before  a  candle  that,  Mme.  Lafon  whis 
pered,  had  been  blessed  and  was  preserved  by  its  owners  against 
just  such  occasions  as  the  present. 

Sylvia,  received  as  a  matter  of  course,  sat  for  a  while,  with 
Tac  curled  dutifully  at  her  feet,  in  a  row  of  fugitives.  A  cou 
ple  of  men,  before  her,  were  playing  cards  on  the  flagged  floor. 
The  other  occupants  of  the  cubicle  speculated  on  the  length  of 
the  raid  and  its  intensity;  children  ran  in  from  the  corridors, 
laughing  at  a  game  of  tag.  Whenever  the  dulled  sound-waves 
of  an  explosion  penetrated  the  cellar,  they  were  echoed  in  a 
chorus  of  long-drawn  ah-h-h's,  the  people  shivering  and  cross 
ing  themselves  and  declaring  that  this  last  bomb  was  nearer 
than  any  of  its  predecessors. 

An  hour  passed.  Sylvia,  despite  the  wraps  of  which  kindly 
fellow-sufferers  dispossessed  themselves  in  order  to  warm  her, 
felt  cold.  For  all  that  they  were  so  securely  walled,  the  cel 
lars  were  not  dry,  and  everybody  was  soon  coughing.  Some 
property  of  the  air  made  her  very  drowsy.  Once,  a  laughing 
child  ran  up  to  her. 

"Vous  etes  americaine,  mademoiselle?"  he  asked. 

She  told  him  that  she  was.    "And  you  ?"  she  inquired. 

"A  little  French  soldier/'  he  assured  her.  He  was  not  more 
than  five  years  old ;  probably  he  had  no  recollection  of  a  Paris 
that  was  not  at  war.  "But  when  I  grow  up,"  he  added,  "I'm 
going  to  be  the  man  that  sounds  the  siren." 

She  fell  asleep.  Waking,  she  feared  that  she  might  take  a 
cold  that  would  interfere  with  her  work.  She  would  have 
started  at  once  for  her  hotel,  but  to  such  a  proposal  good  Mme. 
Lafon  would  not  listen.  The  concierge  at  last  compromised 
with  M.  Brown's  friend  by  conducting  her  to  Andy's  garret 
workroom — "For  he  is  en  voyage"  she  said — and  leaving  her 
alone  there  with  the  dog.  .  .  . 


228  VICTORIOUS 


IV 


Andy  had  been  caught  by  the  air-raid  much  as  was  Sylvia ; 
like  her  he  wearied  of  his  abri;  but  Andy,  when  tired  of  it, 
walked  through  the  streets  emptied  by  terror,  straight  home. 
In  the  excitement  of  the  attack,  Mme.  Lafon  must  have  for 
gotten  to  latch  the  street  door  after  admitting  Sylvia :  he  found 
it  standing  half  open,  brushed  against  somebody  crouching  in 
the  darkness  and,  accounting  this  unseen  as  a  frightened  neigh 
bor,  ascended  without  pause  to  his  rooms. 

He  entered  quietly,  yet  he  had  no  sooner  done  so  than  a 
silent  something  flew  at  his  throat.  His  arms  clutched  a  hairy 
figure,  and  he  crashed  against  the  passage-wall. 


It  was  over  in  an  instant.  The  animal — he  realized  now 
that  it  must  be  a  dog — had  him  at  its  mercy,  and  yet  surren 
dered  its  advantage  as  quickly  and  as  silently  as  it  had 
achieved  it.  Andy's  hand,  seeking  his  coat  pocket  for  matches, 
was  given  a  shamed  caress. 

He  struck  a  light. 

"Why,  Tac !"  he  cried. 

The  dog  circled  him,  cringing  ever  so  little  by  way  of  apol 
ogy  and  wagging  a  tail  held  low. 

Andy  bent  toward  his  recent  assailant.  It  must  be  Tac — 
it  was :  the  collar  said  so. 

"Come  here,"  said  Andy. 

Tac  leaped  toward  him  but,  when  he  put  out  his  hand 
again,  jumped  a  few  paces  forward,  stopped  abruptly  and 
looked  back.  It  was  a  plain  invitation  to  follow. 

The  match  burning  his  fingers,  Andy  accepted.  He  passed 
by  his  kitchen  through  the  dining-room  and  bedroom  and,  at 
the  door  of  the  workroom,  tossed  the  match  away. 

Both  the  windows  were  unshuttered  which  looked  over  the 
stone  balustrade  and  up  the  length  of  the  Palais  Royal  gar 
dens.  Through  them  poured  the  pale  silver  of  the  clear  night, 


VICTORIOUS 

and  curled  in  an  armchair  beside  the  farther  was  a  girlish 
figure,  before  which  Andy  came  almost  to  his  knees. 

The  barrage  had  momentarily  lessened,  but  there  sounded, 
as  if  close  overhead,  the  whirr  of  French  planes  and  the 
pump-pump  of  Gothas ;  a  dull  explosion,  followed  by  the  long 
noise  of  falling  masonry,  told  of  another  bomb  successfully 
dropped  in  the  Quarter;  yet  there,  her  hands  lying  loose  in 
her  lap,  her  golden  head  drooping  to  one  side,  Sylvia,  relaxed 
and  unconscious,  slept  like  a  child. 

Tac  woke  her.  He  knew  Andy  for  a  friend,  but  he  plainly 
demonstrated  that  he  would  permit  no  nearer  approach  until 
he  had  awakened  her.  He  trotted  to  her,  raised  one  paw  and 
quietly  pressed  it  against  her  knee. 

She  got  up  and  stood  facing  Andy,  for  a  moment  with  eyes 
wide  but  not  yet  fully  conscious.  Tinted  by  the  green  cur 
tains,  the  night-light  of  the  sky  bathed  her,  intensifying  her 
virginal  radiance,  making  her  seem  a  statue  wrought  of  ice.  It 
was  his  early  dream  come  true:  he  thought  her  armored,  he 
looked  for  a  casque  upon  her  head ;  hers  were  the  lips  of  high 
adventure,  her  glance  the  glance  of  excellent  duty — ffun  lis 
d'une  beaute  admirable." 

Then  she  comprehended : 

"Andy! — You're  back? — I  was  in  the  cellars.  I'd  been 
caught  by  the  raid — I'll  go." 

Another  bomb  fell  in  the  Quarter.    It  restored  realization. 

He  came  to  her  and  took  her  hand.  "You  must  go.  You 
must  go  back  to  the  cellars.  It's  not  safe  here." 

But  she  would  not  listen  to  that.  "It  was  too  stuffy.  I 
should  take  cold.  I'll  go  home,"  She  drew  her  coat  about 
her. 

"You'll  not  do  anything  of  the  kind !" — He  thought  he  saw 
her  cut  by  some  tossed  fragments. — "The  streets  are  twice  as 
dangerous  as  the  houses.  They're  full  of  flying  glass."  He 
had  been  helping  her  with  her  coat;  his  arms  were  around  her. 
He  thrilled  at  touching  her  waist.  "Sylvia !" 

She  darted  away.  She  opened  the  folding  window  and,  Tac 
at  her  heels,  gained  the  balcony. 

"Sylvia !"    He  started  after  her. 


230  VICTORIOUS 

She  reopened  the  window  from  the  outside,  ever  so  little, 
and  smiled  into  his  face  not  six  inches  from  her  own.  This 
was  a  new  Sylvia :  a  roguish  one ! 

"I  have  a  piece  of  news  for  you/'  she  said.  "If  you  prom 
ise—" 

"Come  in." 

" — not  to  make  me  go  down-stairs — " 

"Come  in!" 

" — I'll  give  it  to  you  and  then  let  you  walk  home  with  me 
after  the  raid's  over;  but — " 

"Do  come  in !" 

"If  you  won't,  I'll  stay  out  here  and — " 

"I'll  come  through  the  other  window !" 

" — run  on  down  the  balcony  and  not  let  you  drag  me 
back!" 

"But,  Sylvia—" 

"It's  important  news,  Andy."  She  was  very  serious  now. 
"It  may  mean  the  winning  of  the  war." 

VI 

Of  course  she  had  her  way  with  him.  He  brought  her  in ; 
he  closed  the  shutters  to  protect  the  glass,  already  slightly 
protected  by  its  strips  of  paper  pasted  diagonally  like  lattice 
work — there  was  little  glass  left  for  repairing  in  Paris — and 
drew  the  curtains  to  hide  the  light.  Then  he  started  a  fire  in 
the  grate  and  bundled  her  up  in  an  armchair  beside  it.  Only 
after  all  this  was  accomplished,  among  the  recurrent  noises 
of  the  raid,  and  after  he  had  moved  his  lamp  and  writing-table 
to  the  hearthside,  did  he  let  her  tell  him  her  news. 

She  had  met  a  great  French  general  through  her  work  at  the 
Foyers,  and  been  guaranteed  through  intimate  friends.  The 
soldier  had  let  fall  a  word  plainly  indicating  his  doubt  of  as 
sistance,  now  desperately  required,  from  American  troops: 
the  American  enlisted  men  were  excellent,  but  their  general 
staff,  itself  unready,  would  not  enter  the  fight  and  would  not 
let  its  forces  enter  under  any  other  staff;  to  save  the  world, 
this  decision,  if  decision,  must  be  overcome  and  the  United 


VICTORIOUS  231 

States  made  aware  of  the  immediate  need  of  more  men  and 
still  more;  etiquette  forbade  the  general  a  direct  appeal  to 
the  American  public,  and  yet  that  was  now  the  single  hope. 
Sylvia  mentioned  Andy ;  she  gave  parts  of  several  days  to  per 
suasion  and  to  securing  assurances  of  Andy's  reliability.  At 
last,  the  general  dictated  to  her  the  notes  for  an  interview  ex 
pressing  his  opinions.  These  she  carried  always  with  her.  If 
Andy  would  write  from  them  and  submit  the  result  for  the 
general's  approval,  the  French  Foreign-Office  would  see  that 
the  interview  was  cabled,  uncensored,  to  America. 

Andy  could  not  think  it  true,  but  she  proved  it. 

"It's  splendid !"  he  cried,  his  eyes  running  over  the  papers 
still  warm  from  her  bosom.  "It's  the  biggest  story  since  1914, 
and,  what's  more,  it'll  be  doing  a  big  thing  for  America!" 
Suddenly,  he  looked  up  at  her.  "And  you  did  all  this  for  me !" 

"I  did  it,"  she  said,  "because  I  want  us  to  win  this  war !" 

"Gee,"  said  Andy,  "you're  a — a  regular — There  isn't  any 
body  as  wonderful  as  you  are — not  anywhere,  there  isn't !" 

The  fire  leaped  in  the  grate.  It  showed  his  worshipping 
eyes,  his  trembling  lips. 

She  shook  her  head.  "I'm  not  wonderful  at  all,"  she  said. 
"Don't  tell  me  so.  You  hurt  me  when  you  do.  I'm — at  the 
best  of  times,  I'm  only  commonplace." 

He  laughed  at  that.    "Why,  who  else  in  all  the  world — " 

"Write,"  said  Sylvia. 

He  sat  down  to  obey  her.  On  the  table  were  some  letters 
that  Mme.  Lafon  had  put  there  during  his  absence.  Only  one 
would  he  now  pause  to  open,  but  the  envelope  of  that  bore  the 
seal  of  the  British  Embassy. 

"Look  here !"  he  cried.  His  glance  betrayed  consternation 
as  he  handed  it  to  her. 

She  read :  "  (I  beg  leave  to  inform  you  that  I  have  this  day 
been  informed  by  the  British  Military  Intelligence  that  they 
are  unable  to  arrange  for  a  visit  at  the  time  suggested  for 
you,  and  it  is  regretted  .  .  .'  What  does  it  mean?" 

"It  means  more  than  it  says,"  Andy  choked.  "It  means 
they're  never  going  to  let  me  take  that  trip  you  fixed  for  me." 

"But  they  told  me  it  was  all  right." 


232  VICTORIOUS 

Somehow  the  picture  of  Garcia  swung  into  Andy's  brain. 
"Somebody's  been  after  me.  Somebody's  set  them  against 
me !"  He  sank  into  the  chair  beside  the  table.  "I'll  find  out 
about  this,"  he  vowed. 

"Garcia,  perhaps/'  said  Sylvia. 

"They'll  try  anything.    They  told  me  so — Garcia  did." 

Her  eyes  sparkled  indignation,  but  what  she  said  was: 

"Write." 

VII 

He  wrote  rapidly,  tossing  the  notes  into  the  fire  page  by 
page,  as  he  finished  with  them.  Aeroplanes  and  the  barrage 
sounded  overhead;  bombs  burst  in  the  city.  Neither  Sylvia 
nor  Andy  heeded  them. 

VIII 

As  the  work  finished,  there  came  that  hopeful  hush  which 
fell  always  between  the  last  explosion  of  an  air-raid  and  the 
bugled  assurance  of  its  ending.  In  it,  Andy,  having  weighted 
his  completed  manuscript  upon  the  table,  drew  his  benefactor, 
with  Tac  following,  through  the  now  reopened  window  and  on 
to  the  stone  balcony. 

The  old  gardens  swung  below  them  like  a  silvered  fairyland 
seen  from  the  basket  of  a  languidly  moving  balloon;  above, 
a  million  stars  shed  their  white  radiance  out  of  an  indigo 
heaven.  For  any  sound  that  climbed  to  the  balcony,  the  quiet 
that  followed  the  recent  dreadful  clamor  might  have  been  the 
quiet  of  a  city  slain.  Only  from  some  fortification  far  beyond 
the  left  bank  of  the  river,  the  seeking  finger  of  a  searchlight 
hovered  over  the  pages  of  the  sky. 

Sylvia  looked  at  the  stars,  and  Andy  looked  at  Sylvia. 
There,  her  white  hands  touching  the  ancient  balustrade,  her 
face  upraised  to  the  eternal  canopy,  she  seemed  more  than 
ever  the  Jeanne  d'Arc  of  his  eaj-ly  dreams,  more  than  ever 
worshipful  and  so  more  than  ever  remote.  A  broken  breath 
trembled  from  his  lips. 

"It's  over,"  he  said.    "There  isn't  any  danger  now." 


VICTOKIOUS  233 

The  jangle  of  a  bell  set  a  period  to  his  sentence.  Toward 
that  sound,  Tac  darted  noiselessly. 

Sylvia  was  at  once  a  woman.  She  shot  him  a  startled 
glance.  Her  fingers  closed  upon  his  nearer  wrist. 

"What's  that?" 

"My  bell.  I  guess  it's  Mme.  Lafon  looking  for  you."  He 
stepped  inside. 

She  followed  him.    "Be  careful." 

"What  of  ?"  laughed  Andy.  He  had  struck  a  match  and,  as 
he  held  it  in  his  cupped  hands,  the  red  light  shone  over  his  red 
hair.  "You  don't  think  a  pair  of  Boche  aviators  have  landed 
on  the  roof  of  the  Palais  Eoyal?" 

"I  don't  know  what  to  think."  With  one  hand,  she  was  re 
straining  the  quietly  recalled  Tac,  the  other  she  put  toward 
Andy's  back,  as  he  preceded  her  through  the  dark  room. 
"That  note  from  the  Embassy  has  made  me  nervous." 

Lighting  the  gas-jet  in  the  tiny  hall,  Andy  was  too  pre 
occupied  to  attend  to  her.  He  next  drew  back  the  deadlatch 
and  flung  wide  the  door. 

"Well,"  he  said  in  French,  "what  do  you  wish,  monsieur?" 

He  was  addressing  a  stooped  man  whose  face  was  hidden 
by  a  cap  drawn  far  over  the  nose. 

"Pardon,  monsieur,"  the  visitor  replied.  He  took  one  step 
across  the  threshold.  "I  regret  that  I  have  deranged  you" 
— he  craned  his  neck — "you  and  madame." 

"Madamoiselle,"  Andy  corrected.  "You  have  not  deranged 
us.  What  do  you  want  ?" 

"A  thousand  pardons."  The  man  edged  inward.  "I 
thought  that  I  was  ringing  at  the  apartment  of  a  friend." 

"This  is  my  apartment,"  said  Andy. 

"I  have  a  friend  that  lives  in  this  house,"  the  stooping  man 
went  on,  but  somehow  Andy  felt  that  those  eyes,  shadowed  by 
the  visor  of  the  cap,  were  intent  on  other  matters — "and  I 
mistook  in  the  darkness  your  room  for  his.  Perhaps  I  have 
come  one  flight  too  high.  I  was  confused  by  the  noises  of 
the  raid." 

He  edged  yet  another  step  into  the  hallway,  but  there  Andy 
placed  himself  so  as  to  bar  farther  progress. 


234:  VICTOKIOUS 

"Then  you  climb  slowly/'  he  said.  "It  has  been  very  quiet 
for  some  time.  Good  night,  monsieur/' 

Evidently,  the  fellow  realized  an  impasse.  Though  with  an 
ill  grace,  he  retreated.  The  instant  that  he  cleared  the  door 
way,  he  was  merged  in  the  gloom  of  the  hall.  Out  of  that  his 
voice  came  mockingly: 

"Good  day!" 

Andy  closed  the  door.  With  his  back  against  it,  he  looked 
at  Sylvia,  puzzled : 

"What  do  you  think  of  that?" 

"I  passed  him  when  I  came  down  the  rue  de  Valois.  Tac 
ran  into  him." 

"He  lives  around  here.    I've  noticed  him  before." 

"He's  not  a  Frenchman,"  said  Sylvia.  She  was  breathing 
quickly.  "Didn't  you  notice.  He  put  a  'g*  on  the  end  of  his 
Ion." 

Andy  laughed.  "Oh,  well,  I  guess  he's  just  a  nosy  neigh 
bor." 

"I  don't  know.  You  ought  to  be  careful,  Andy.  You  know 
what  Garcia  said  to  you." 

At  that  Andy  laughed  more  heartily.  "What  could  this 
have  to  do  with  that  ?  You  don't  think  he'd  hire  somebody  to 
murder  me  in  bed?" 

Her  eyes,  always  fathomless,  contained  an  answer.  It 
floated  almost  on  the  surface. 

"Not  that,"  she  said. 

"Well,  then?" 

She  looked  away,  her  brows  puckered : 

"I— I  don't  know." 

It  was  wonderful  to  be  able  to  reassure  her,  to  be  for  a  quick 
moment  the  masculine  protector  of  his  guardian  angel.  "Of 
course  you  don't.  There  isn't  anything  to  know.  It's  all 
right.  You're  just  nervous." 

As  if  to  confirm  his  declaration  of  safety,  there  came  from 
some  street  the  distant  notes  of  the  glad  berloque:  the  bugles 
sang  the  news  that  the  raid  was  indeed  over. 

"There,"  he  said;  "that's  the  'all-clear'  signal."  The  bugle- 
notes  drew  nearer.  "Back  home,"  he  said,  "they  have  a  band 


VICTORIOUS  235 

that  plays  in  the  tower  of  one  of  the  churches  just  before  sun 
up  every  Christmas  morning.    It's  like  that,  this  is." 

IX 

She  encouraged  him  to  talk  more  of  Americus,  as  they 
went,  with  the  delicious  intimacy  of  darkness,  down  the  worn 
old  stairs;  and  he  kept  it  up  while,  she  having  thanked  Mme. 
Lafon,  who  welcomed  Andy,  they  walked  along  the  Galerie 
de  Beaujolais  and  looked,  between  the  iron  bars,  into  the  gar 
den.  He  told  her  of  "Babe"  Campbell,  the  solitary  but  mili- 
tanf  policeman  of  Americus;  of  the  social  life  of  Ladies'  Aid 
Societies ;  how  the  raising  of  a  church-mortgage  used  to  seem 
as  long  a  struggle,  and  as  momentous  as  the  war  seemed  now ; 
of  how  the  elder  people  had  always  been  elderly  and  how  the 
younger  never  grew  old ;  of  Blunston,  and  of  his  own  mother : 
of  her  especially. 

Tac  padded  beside  them,  with  a  guarding  nose  against  all 
things  strange.  He  showed  them  that  a  careless  guard  had 
left  one  of  the  gates  open,  and  they  slipped  through  it  and 
made  a  tour  of  the  garden.  It  was  almost  morning,  and  they 
had  a  long  walk  ahead  of  them.  The  glory  of  the  stars  had 
not  yet  paled,  and  in  it  he  could  see  her  face. 

"Some  day  you'll  go  back  there,"  she  said.  "But  you'll  al 
ways  have  had  your  part  in  the  big  world,  after  this." 

Andy  fetched  a  sigh.  "After  this!  God  knows  when  this 
war'll  end — or  how.  Of  course,  there's  still  a  chance  from 
publicity;  there's  this  interview:  if  the  people  only  learn  the 
truth—" 

She  stopped  short.    "You  forgot  to  give  it  to  me,"  she  said. 

"The  interview  ?  I  didn't  forget :  I  left  it  up  there  because 
I  want  to  revise  it  and  get  a  clean  copy  for  the  general.  I'll 
bring  that  to  your  hotel  by  the  time  you're  getting  up.  How 
are  you  going  to  get  it  to  him  ?" 

Some  one  in  the  French  Foreign-Office,  it  appeared,  was  to 
attend  to  that,  and  so  they  talked  rather  of  the  interview's 
effect. 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Andy.    "You  can  never  tell.    It  might 


236  VICTOEIOUS 

stir  up  the  whole  country,  and  yet  it  might  have  no  effect  at 
all.  I  don't  see  how  we'll  ever  come  through  I" 

For  a  bare  instant,  she  took  his  fevered  hand  in  her  cool, 
firm  grasp. 

"The  men  are  going  to  win,"  she  said ;  "they'll  win  through 
their  sacrifices,  no  matter  how  badly  they're  capitalized :  that's 
how  it  will  end.  And  something  or  somebody  will  make  us 
send  the  men/' 

"If  France  and  England  can  hold  out  that  long — " 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  "don't  you  see?  It's  got  to  come  out  all 
right,  because  the  thing  we  want  to  fight  for  is  so  much  big 
ger  than  all  the  politicians  and  profiteers  put  together !" 

Her  earnestness,  the  innocent  certitude  of  her  faith — these 
and,  no  less  perhaps,  the  childlike  appeal  of  her  mouth,  the 
beauty  of  her  face,  the  direct  gaze  of  her  triumphant  eyes — 
conquered  him.  The  vitality  of  her  loveliness  suffused  the 
night.  He  felt,  in  this  minute,  that  righteousness  must  win 
because  she  was  on  its  side. 


He  came  back  from  her  hotel  in  the  gray  dawn,  knowing 
at  last  that  he  loved  her  and  that  she  was  too  wonderful  for 
him  ever  to  attain.  He  might  not  even  tell  her.  .  .  . 

When  he  reentered  his  rooms,  he  saw  that,  during  his  ab-- 
sence,  they  had  been  robbed.  The  manuscript  of  the  inter  view 
was  missing. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

PROVES  THAT  GRATITUDE  MAY  WARM  THE  BASEST  BOSOMS,  AND 
GIVES  ONE  RECIPE  FOR  A  COMMISSION  IN  THE  CENSORSHIP 

HE  WOULD  not  go  back  to  Sylvia's  hotel  until  she  would 
have  had  some  chance  for  rest  after  such  a  night;  but  the 
sound  of  the  big  gun's  morning  salutation  to  Paris  found  him 
in  the  rue  du  Faubourg-St.-Honore,  waiting  the  opening  of 
the  British  Embassy.  Nearly  all  of  his  papers  had  disappeared 
out  of  the  attic  in  the  Palais  Royal,  including  some  of  the  let 
ters  that  he  had  addressed,  and  never  sent,  to  Sylvia;  the  let 
ter  he  had  written,  by  candlelight,  in  the  uncarpeted  inn-room, 
and  carried  next  his  heart:  he  had  put  it  tenderly  with  his 
other  letters  to  her ;  now  that  was  gone,  too.  Of  the  interview, 
not  even  a  trace  remained,  and  he  realized  that,  having  de 
stroyed  the  notes  and  being  thus  unable  to  rewrite  it  in  the 
general's  words,  the  great  opportunity  was  probably  forever 
lost :  if,  as  he  suspected,  the  American  censorship  had  inspired 
the  theft,  to  bear  the  tale  of  it  to  the  French  would  avail  noth 
ing — and  the  general  himself  would  now  be  away  at  Grand 
Headquarters,  bending  every  energy  to  withstand  the  offen 
sive.  Mme.  Lafon  had  been  innocent  and  ignorant:  nobody 
had  entered  by  the  street-doors  during  his  absence ;  but  some 
body  could  have  entered  one  of  the  neighboring  houses  and 
come  to  Andy's  rooms  by  the  balcony  that  ran  behind  them 
all,  or  the  man  in  the  cap,  of  whom  the  concierge  knew  noth 
ing,  could  have  hidden  on  the  stairway  after  Andy  dismissed 
him. 

The  man  that  he  waited — Dakyns,  the  English  officer,  with 
whom  he  had  made  the  necessary  negotiations  for  the  trip  to 
the  British  front — was  the  first  of  its  officials  to  arrive  at  the 
office.  He  had  taken  an  immediate  liking  to  the  lad.  Andy 
produced  the  letter  from  the  Embassy. 

237 


238  VICTORIOUS 

"Why,  yes/'  said  Dakyns,  "I  can  tell  you  a  bit  about  this 
affair.  The  trip  was  canceled  as  a  result  of  information  about 
you  sent  us  by  the  American  Military  Intelligence." 

"What  sort  of  information?" 

Dakyns  flushed  a  little.  "Well,  as  to  that,  you  know,  I'd 
better  leave  you  to  guess,  hadn't  I?" 

"That  I'd  broken  censorship-rules  ?" 

"Oh,  no.    Everybody  breaks  them." 

'Andy  had  felt  sure  of  his  guess.  Now  his  imagination 
failed  him. 

"Well,  it  was  all  confounded  rot,  of  course.  I  knew  that, 
knowing  you.  Only,  you  see,  the  etiquette  of  the  service 
makes  us  observe  any  caution  sent  us  by  our  allies.  It's  purely 
formal." 

"But  what  was  it?" 

"Really,  I've  said  a  lot  more  than  I  ought  to.  You'll  have 
to  ask  your  own  people,  and  you  mustn't  say  just  who  it  was 
told  you.  It's  only  some  mistake  in  identification.  They'll 
straighten  it  out  soon  enough ;  then  you  drop  me  a  line,  and 
we'll  get  you  down  to  our  front  any  time  you  say." 

II 

Andy  stopped  at  a  cafe  and  wrote  to  the  chief  of  the  Amer 
ican  Military  Intelligence.  He  said  that  he  was  informed 
that  information  against  him  had  been  lodged  with  the  Brit 
ish.  "As  a  matter  of  fair  play,  I  ask  you,"  he  concluded,  "to 
let  me  know  what  you  condemned  me  for  without  giving  me  a 
hearing." 

Then  he  inquired  at  one  boulevard  cafe  after  another  until, 
having  expended  some  ten  francs  in  tips,  he  found  a  waiter 
that  knew  Jacquette's  address.  He  found  her  abed  in  a 
squalid  back-room  in  a  maison  meublee  that  faced  the  Passage 
de  1'Industrie.  She  sat  up  among  the  rumpled  pillows,  a  very 
tousled  Jacquette,  and  expressed  a  desire  to  embrace  her  pre 
server. 

The  preserver  replied  that  he  would  prefer  some  informa 
tion.  He  had  never  before  entered  any  woman's  bedroom 
save  his  mother's,  and  his  cheeks  were  scarlet. 


VICTORIOUS  239 

"Eh  ~bien."  She  shrugged  her  thin  shoulders  tinder  the 
soiled  nightgown.  "You  were  very  gentil  and  very  brave.  I 
hope  well  that  I  can  help  you,  my  little  friend,  and  I  shall  be 
tres  contente  if  I  discommode  that  cowardly  pig  of  a  lieuten 
ant:  he  ran  away  from  the  obus — and,  besides,  he  owes  me 
ten  louis." 

"Did  he  ever  talk  to  you  about  me  ?"  asked  Andy. 

"Very  often."  She  leaned  alarmingly  far  out  of  bed,  se 
cured  a  hand-mirror  from  the  dressing-table  and  began,  with 
implements  brought  out  of  the  bed-clothes,  to  redden  her  lips 
and  cheeks.  "Very  often  and  never  well.  It  was  that  which 
made  you  so  interesting." 

"Somebody  robbed  my  rooms  last  night,"  said  Andy,  "and 
took  a  valuable  paper." 

Jacquette's  head  was  tilted  to  one  side.  Her  lower  jaw  was 
drawn  far  down  while  she  rubbed  at  a  cheek.  "Then  you  may 
be  well  certain  that  paper  is  now  in  the  rooms  of  my  Lieuten 
ant  Pig." 

Andy  had  not  seated  himself.  He  drew  nearer  her.  "How 
do  you  know?" 

"He  has  often  said  that  some  day  he  would  have  you 
robbed." 

"Where  does  he  live?    Tell  me  that,  please." 

"But  of  course  I  shall  tell  you !"  She  put  aside  the  rouge 
and  produced  a  powder-puff.  "It  is  on  the  first  floor  over  the 
little  bureau  de  tdbac  at  the  corner  of  the  rue  Cambon  and  the 
rue  Mont  Thabor." 

Andy  offered,  awkwardly,  to  shake  hands.  "I — I'm  very 
much,  very,  very  much  obliged  to  you/' 

"But  it  is  nothing !"  laughed  Jaequette.  "In  fine,  it  pleases 
me.  Go  there  and  pull  his  nose  this  very  evening."  She  gave 
Andy  a  sudden  jerk  toward  her  and  kissed  him.  "There,  do 
not  have  fear  of  me.  It  is  well  understood  that  you  have  a 
sweetheart  of  your  own,  young  monsieur !" 

Tor  celerity,  Andy's  retreat  rivaled  that  of  Garcia. 


240  VICTORIOUS 

in 

Perhaps  the  young  man  was  learning  the  practice  of  guile 
from  experiencing  the  effects  of  it.  Certainly,  whatever  he 
might  decide  to  do  later,  it  seemed  best  that  he  first  meet 
Garcia  in  a  manner  calculated  to  lull  the  flames  of  the  lieuten 
ant's  suspicion  and  reveal  the  bed-coal  of  his  purpose.  Andy 
accordingly  presented  himself  at  the  press-division's  quarters 
in  the  rue  Ste.  Anne  wearing  his  most  boyish  manner  and, 
being  immediately  admitted  to  Garcia's  office,  entered  it  de 
corously. 

Garcia  was  alone,  his  feet  on  the  flat-topped  desk,  a  tooth 
pick  between  his  lips.  He  pushed  his  caller  a  lacquered  box. 

"Morning,"  he  said.  His  smiles  had  always  seemed  difficult ; 
when  the  toothpick  was  in  its  accustomed  place,  they  were 
seldom  attempted :  nevertheless,  he  now  achieved  one.  "Have 
a  cigar,  and  sit  down." 

"Thanks,"  said  Andy.  He  sat  down  opposite  Garcia;  he 
took  a  cigar  and  lighted  it. 

"Put  another  one  in  your  pocket.    Take  a  couple." 

"I  will/'  said  Andy.    He  took  three. 

"That  was  a  close  shave  we  had  yesterday,"  said  the  lieuten 
ant. 

Andy  agreed.    "I  see  you  weren't  hurt.    Was  the  lady  ?" 

"Not  a  bit.   A  cat  always  falls  on  its  feet." 

"What  became  of  you  ?"  Andy  ventured. 

"Me?"  Garcia  elevated  his  black  brows.  "Oh,  I  got  the 
girl  out,  and  then  we  saw  some  women'd  fainted  across  the 
street,  and  so  I  walked  over  to  see  if  I  could  do  anything  for 
?em. — Where' ve  you  been  all  this  time?  You  haven't  been 
around  here  lately." 

"I've  been  busy  with  another  kind  of  work." 

Garcia  grinned  knowingly.  "Well,  you  know  I  said  I 
wanted  to  see  you." 

"Yes.   I'm  sorry  now  I  was  so  long  getting  here." 

"I  thought  you  might  be.  Now,  lemme  tell  you  what  it 
was  I  wanted  to  see  you  about — " 

"Just  a  minute,  and  I  will."  Andy  knocked  the  first  ash 


VICTOKIOUS  241 

from  his  cigar.  " After  the  raid  last  night,  somebody  robbed 
my  rooms/7 

It  was  apparently  to  make  his  smile  the  more  sour  that 
Garcia  temporarily  removed  his  toothpick.  "Hard  luck.  Lose 
much?" 

"Some  papers/' 

"Personal?" 

"And  business." 

"Did  you  go  to  the  police  ?" 

"The  French  police?" 

"Yes." 

"I  didn't  think  it  was  a  case  for  them." 

"Well,"  said  Garcia — he  replaced  the  toothpick  and  ran  his 
fingers  through  the  jungle  of  his  hair — "did  you  think  we 
could  do  anything  for  you?" 

"I  knew/'  said  Andy,  trying  to  make  Garcia's  eyes  meet  his 
own,  "that  your  division  was  under  the  Army  Secret  Service." 

"It  sure  is.  We've  got  all  kinds  of  people  working  for  us — 
men  and  women.  Generally,  though,  the  women  don't  pull 
off  the  tricks :  they  just  get  things  ready." 

This  struck  Andy  as  a  strange  aside.  "I  thought  you  might 
be  useful." 

"We  might  be."  Garcia  did  not  change  his  position,  but  he 
just  noticeably  paused  before  he  added :  "To  our  friends." 

It  was  Andy's  turn  to  pause.  When  he  spoke,  however,  it 
was  evenly.  "You  don't  consider  me  one  ?" 

"What's  your  game  ?"  asked  Garcia.  "Why  won't  you  work 
with  us  ?  What  have  you  got  it  in  for  us  for  ?" 

"I'll  give  you  an  example.  I've  been  down  at  our  sector, 
and  didn't  have  to  have  a  pass  to  get  there.  I  saw  a  lot  of 
things,  but  I  heard  one  that'll  do.  You  had  a  little  raid  on 
the  Boche  down  there.  It  cost  you  three  million  dollars,  and 
you  lost  a  third  of  your  men.  You  sent  four  hundred  men 
over  the  top,  and  a  hundred  would've  been  plenty.  I'm  against 
that  sort  of  waste." 

"We've  got  to  learn." 

"And  we  haven't  any  men  to  speak  of  in  France,  and  aren't 
sending  any,  and  yet  the  war's  going  to  be  lost  if  we  don't. 


242  VICTOEIOUS 

Oh," — he  had  to  check  himself — "I'm  against  all  that  sort  of 
thing :  the  lies  and  the  bad  clothes  and  the  lack  of  planes  and 
guns  and  ammunition — all  of  it!  I'm  against  all  Innis  said 
he  was  against,  and  Evans,  the  last  time  I  was  in  here." 

Garcia  heard  him  without  moving  a  muscle. 

"Well,  now,"  he  said  in  a  matter-of-fact  manner,  "I  know 
we've  had  our  little  rows,  you  and  me ;  but  I  haven't  got  any 
thing  against  you  personally,  and  I  believe  you  could  be  of 
some  use  to  your  country,  if  you'd  only  begin  by  being  sensi 
ble.  You  want  to  be  of  use  to  your  country,  don't  you  ?" 

"Do  you  think  I'd  run  the  chances  I'm  running  with  your 
people  if  I  didn't  want  to  be?" 

"Then  you  ought  to  understand,  Brown,  that  this  is  a  war 
an'  that  people've  got  to  get  killed  in  it."  Garcia  was  at 
tempting  a  palliative  tone.  "You  ought  to  understand  that 
there's  got  to  be  some  things  that  look  bad  for  a  while,  because 
they're  big,  and  there  are  big  interests  involved — interests  of 
the  country — that  make  'em  necessary." 

" Such  as  shoes  nobody  can  wear  ?" 

"Exactly  that.    "We  can't  tell  everything  we  know,  Brown/' 

Andy's  brown  eyes  narrowed,  but  almost  imperceptibly. 

"Well,"  he  said  in  a  smooth  voice,  "suppose  I  did  under 
stand  that?" 

"You  know  the  newspaper-game." 

Garcia  relieved  the  desk  of  his  feet  and  slowly  rose.  "You'd 
make  a  good  lieutenant  in  the  press-division,  Brown." 

Andy  cleared  his  throat.    "The  army  turned  me  down  once." 

"What  for?" 

"Something  about  a  heart-murmur. — Oh,  but  I'm  perfectly 
strong." 

"We  could  get  around  that." 

It  was  a  plain  offer  of  what  Andy  had  once  so  desired.  He, 
too,  rose. 

"What  would  I  have  to  do?"  he  asked. 

"You'd  be  useful  in  the  censorship.  You  could  make  things 
easier  for  the  newspaper-boys  and  explain  'em  to  the  army." 

"I'd  want  to  fight." 


YICTOKIOUS  243 

"You — "  Garcia's  eyes  were  round  in  unbelief.  "You, 
what?" 

"I'd  want  to  fight." 

"Well,  I  guess  that  could  be  fixed  easy  enough." 

"But  what  would  I  have  to  do  first?" 

"And  I  might  find  those  papers  for  you." 

"But  what  would  I  have  to  do  first?" 

Garcia  licked  his  lips  before  replying.  "Just  one  thing. 
Understand,  like  I  said,  that  these  mistakes  you've  made  such 
a  fuss  over  are  excusable  if  you  only  knew  what's  back  of  'em 
— just  that  and  writing  a  couple  of  articles  that  say  so." 

"Then  the  little  fellow  in  the  cap  who  hung  around  my 
rooms  was  a  Secret  Service  man  ?" 

"He  might  'a'  been,  Brown." 

"There've  been  charges  lodged  with  the  British." 

"I'd  call  them  off." 

"And  I'll  get  a  commission — a  commission  and  my  papers 
—if  I  take  back  all  I've  written?" 

"You'll  get  a  commission  an'  all  your  papers  except  the  in 
terview." 

"How  do  I  know  I'd  get  the  commission  ?" 

"You  needn't  hand  me  your  denial  till  I  hand  you  the  com 
mission." 

Andy  turned  toward  the  door.    "Good-b)T,"  he  said. 

"You'll  do  it  ?"    Garcia  came  eagerly  after  him. 

"Do  it?"  Andy  wheeled  back.  His  freckled  face  flamed, 
his  eyes  snapped  fire,  his  red  hair  seemed  fairly  to  bristle. 
"Do  it?  What  do  you  think  I  am?  Do  you  think  I'm  what 
you  are  ?  I  only  wanted  to  see  how  far  you'd  go.  Get  out  of 
my  way !" 

Garcia,  his  cheeks  livid,  had  slipped  between  his  caller  and 
the  door.  With  the  ruin  of  his  expectations,  his  old  manner 
was  returned  and  with  it  a  more  venomous  anger. 

"You  don't  know  what  you're  up  against !"  he  whispered. 
"I  know   it's   not   the   army.    I  know  it's  only  a  gang  of 
dirty  politicians,  in  uniform  and  out.    But  if  it  was  the  whole 
earth,  I  wouldn't  take  your  rotten  bribe !" 


244  VICTORIOUS 

"You'll  be  fired/' 

"I  told  you  before  I  resigned  my  credentials  long  ago." 

"What  do  we  care  for  that?  Your  bond'll  be  forfeited. 
You'll  be  fired  anyhow.  You'll  be  sent  home  under  arrest." 
Garcia,  his  back  to  the  door,  had  flung  out  his  arms  to  bar 
Andy's  passage.  His  head,  thrust  toward  the  correspondent, 
writhed  like  an  adder's. 

"If  you  don't  get  out  of  my  road,"  said  Andy  with  regained 
composure,  "I'll  put  you  out." 

"I've  got  you  framed  every  way,  this  time,"  Garcia  threat 
ened.  "Don't  go  thinkin'  you  can  get  away  with  one  thing." 

"Move  out,  now,"  said  Andy. 

"And  another  thing,"  Garcia  said  between  his  teeth,  "an 
accredited  correspondent's  an  officer.  We  can  prefer  charges 
of  immoral  conduct  against  you.  You  had  a  woman  in  your 
rooms  last  night,  an'  we  know  who  it  was !" 

Andy  uttered  no  word  of  reply.  'He  stepped  slowly  back, 
his  clenched  fists  at  his  sides. 

Then,  throwing  all  his  force  into  it,  he  shot  out  his  right 
arm.  His  whole  body  was  behind  it. 

It  struck  on  the  point  of  Garcia's  drooping  jaw. 

The  censor  crumpled  to  the  floor. 

Andy  stepped  over  the  body  and  out  of  the  room. 

"The  lieutenant  needs  attention,"  he  said  to  the  military 
clerk  at  the  typewriter  outside. 

As  he  proceeded  toward  the  Place  de  la  Concorde,  he  me 
chanically  wiped  his  knuckles  with  his  handkerchief.  He  felt 
that  they  must  be  dirty.  Presently,  he  tossed  the  handkerchief 
away. 

IV 

On  what  might  happen  to  him  as  punishment  for  his  de 
fiance  of  power  and  assault  upon  power's  vice-regent  he  was 
too  young  and  too  very  angry  to  reflect;  how  the  vast  oppor 
tunity  of  the  interview  was  doubtless  ruined — an  opportunity 
that  Andy  conceived  of  national,  or  even  world-wide,  import — 
he  quite  frankly  dared  not  consider;  but  this  last  insult  from 
Garcia  and  its  more  than  probable  bearing  upon  Sylvia  rose 


VICTOEIOUS  245 

like  the  genie  from  the  bottle  and  darkened  all  the  sky.  Had 
he  been  an  older,  and  therefore  less  brave,  man,  he  might  have 
wondered  whether  physical  restraint  had  not  been,  in  the  clear 
interests  thus  involved,  more  expedient;  being  what  he  was, 
he  saw  only  that,  since  the  presence  of  Sylvia  in  his  midnight 
rooms  became  facilely  explicable  to  a  suspicious  world  solely 
when  not  involved  with  the  presence  of  sacredly  intimate  let 
ters  and  verses  addressed  to  her,  he  owed  her,  first,  a  certain 
warning,  and,  next,  some  still  further  bold  advance  directed 
toward  reconquest  of  the  stolen  manuscripts.  Somehow  (he 
had  as  yet  no  conception  how)  he  would  make  forcible  recov 
ery;  meantime,  he  ought  to  warn  her  of  the  present  danger. 

Yet,  in  the  hotel  drawing-room,  whither  she  brought  the 
very  spirit  of  the  morning  on  the  face  and  in  the  hands  of  a 
girl  that  seemed  to  have  enjoyed  the  fullest  night's  rest,  he 
was  no  sooner  confronted  with  her  dewy  presence  than  he 
confessed  the  impossibility  of  complete  confession.  To  tell 
her  what  the  missing  letters  were  would  be  brazenly  to  tell 
her  that  he  loved  her,  and  she,  looking  at  him  so  straight  from 
her  wide  eyes,  was  still  a  deity  to  whom  to  own  earthly  love 
was  to  offer  sacrilege. 

He  had  told  her,  immediately  and  in  the  fewest  words,  of 
the  theft  of  the  interview.  That  done,  he  was  at  an  abrupt 
termination. 

She  asked  him,  was  he  sure?  There  could  be,  he  said,  no 
doubt  of  it. 

"Garcia/3  she  said :  "this  is  his  work.  I  knew  that  man  at 
the  door  wasn't  a  Frenchman." 

"He  was  a  Secret  Service  man,"  said  Andy.  He  added  no 
word  of  how  that  had  been  so  recently  confirmed. 

"Yes,  of  course.  Well,  there  isn't  time  and  there  isn't  a 
chance  of  getting  a  fresh  interview.  They  don't  think  you 
have  a  copy?" 

"They  cleaned  out  the  whole  place." 

"But  you  might  have  carried  one  with  you — or  the  notes." 

"I  used  a  pencil,  and  they  could  have  seen  pieces  of  the  notes 
lying  around  in  the  grate." 

"So  they  know  they  have  it  all,  and  they  know,  with  this 


246  VICTOKIOUS 

offensive  going  on,  we  can't  get  another.  We  must  get  this 
one  back." 

"The  French  daren't  send  it  now." 

"Not" — she  bent  and  patted  Tac,  curled  on  the  floor  before 
her — "not  if  they  don't  know  that  our  censorship  knows  ?" 

"They'll  be  told." 

"We  mustn't  cross  that  bridge  till  we  come  to  it.  The  thing 
is  to  get  back  the  manuscript." 

"That's  what  I  thought  at  first— but  how?" 

She  picked  up,  from  her  sofa,  his  cap  and  began,  abstract- 
'edly  to  pluck  at  it.  He  thought  her  strong  fingers  would  tear 
the  lining.  Her  brows  puckered.  "Give  me  a  day  to  think 
about  that." 

"Garcia  has  it,"  said  Andy :  "I  can't  tell  you — can't  tell  you 
how  I  know  it,  but  I  do.  He  has  it  in  his  rooms." 

"You  haven't  been  there?"  she  quickly  asked. 

"No,  but  I'm  sure  of  it." 

"You  mustn't  run  that  risk.  He'd  not  want  anything  bet 
ter  than  to  catch  you  there  and  call  you  a  thief." 

"I  know  that;  but" — Andy  nodded  a  determined  head;  he 
drew  resolution  from  her  sublime  practicality.  "I'll  get  this 
somehow.  Don't  worry :  leave  it  to  me." 

She  smiled  at  him,  but,  for  all  her  calm,  she  had,  indeed, 
torn  a  bit  of  the  lining  from  his  cap.  "Wait  a  day.  Perhaps 
we  can  think  of  something.  We're  sure  to." 

This  iteration  brought  back  acutely  the  other  danger.  "But 
there — there  are  other  things." 

Her  quickness  followed  close:  "Other  things  stolen?" 

"Yes.    There  were — were  some  letters." 

"Letters  to  you?" 

"No."  All  his  blood  was  in  his  cheeks.  "Letters  I'd  writ- 
ten  and  never  posted — crazy  letters." 

She  looked  at  him  almost  sharply.  "Not — "  There  was  a 
catch  in  her  throat. — "Not  about  this  muddle  ?" 

"No.  They — oh,  I  guess  they  were  silly  letters!  I  never 
really  meant  to  post  them." 

He  could  not  more  plainly  have  told  her  that  they  were  writ 
ten  to  a  woman.  He  had  bowed  his  head ;  across  her  face  there 


VICTORIOUS  247 

was  drawn  the  rapid  knife-blade  of  pain.  It  would  have  been 
evident  that  a  quality  she  had  not  before  dreamed  of  owning 
was  wounded.  She  looked  at  her  hands  lying  in  her  lap — 
those  hands  which  were  in  part  so  boyish — but  when  she  looked 
up  and  met  his  recovered  gaze,  she  was  smiling. 

"I  suppose  they  wouldn't  hesitate  to  use  them  against  you, 
but  we  must  just  get  them  back,  too." 

"It  isn't  so  much  that  they'd  be  used  against  me,"  said 
Andy:  "they've  got  plenty  against  me  without  them;  but" — 
his  gaze  fell  again — "there's — there's  her." 

"Oh!"  Sylvia  closed  her  eyes  for  a  second.  "Well,"  she 
said  as  she  reopened  them,  "nobody  can  be  blamed  for  letters 
that  are  written  to  her."  She  crushed  the  piece  of  cap-lining 
in  her  pink  palm ;  she  laughed,  and  there  was  in  this  laughter 
a  sound — it  was  almost  a  hint  of  hardness — that  made  him 
gape  at  her.  "I've  been  on  the  stage  long  enough  to  know 
that." 

Andy  winced.  "Don't !"  he  pleaded.  He  also  had  his  rev 
elation. 

Her  answer  was  to  consult  her  wrist-watch,  rouse  Tac  and 
dismiss  Andy  with  perfect  serenity.  "You  mustn't  bother. 
Wait  for  a  day.  There  is  that  much  time.  My  life  has  made 
me  resourceful:  I'll  think  of  something.  Now  I  must  go  to 
rehearsal,  and  you  can't  see  me  on  my  way."  One  bolt  of 
tenderness  touched  her  face ;  she  put  her  hand  on  his  shoul 
der:  "You're  just  a  boy,  Andy.  It  will  all  come  out  right, 
I'm  sure." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

PRESENTING  SYLVIA  RAEBURN  IN  A  NEW  ROLE 

GARCIA,  in  order  to  turn  up  the  lamp,  bent  so  low  that  the 
reviving  light  fell  first  on  his  altered  face  and  only  bit  by; 
bit,  while  his  fingers  fumbled  at  their  task,  illuminated  the 
room  and  the  other  person  in  it. 

His  cheeks  were  flushed  by  a  yellowish  pink;  the  mottled 
skin,  ordinarily  tightly  drawn  over  his  cheek-bones,  was  now 
a  little  bloated.  His  lips  hung  loose,  and  there  was  an  angry 
mark  upon  the  point  of  his  chin.  Under  the  gaze  of  his  pro 
truding  eyes  a  glow  smoldered. 

"Now,"  he  said — there  was  a  slight  thickness  in  his  speech, 
which  disregarded  the  particles — "now  we'll  have  real  party." 

The  growing  light  showed  his  parlor:  the  center-table  on 
which  the  lamp  stood,  and  some  American  papers  and  a 
strong-bladed  paper-cutter  lay;  a  couple  of  easy  chairs  beside 
the  comfortable  coal-fire;  a  cliaise  longue  near  the  bedroom 
door,  standing  ajar;  two  heavily  curtained  windows,  between 
which  rose 'a  closed  Breton  writing  desk,  carved  in  high  relief, 
and,  finally,  the  door  opening  on  the  stairway,  by  which,  with 
Tac  beside  her  stood  Sylvia  Eaeburn. 

She  was  not  the  Sylvia  that  Andy  knew.  A  wide-brimmed 
crimson  hat  shaded,  but  failed  to  hide  a  face  as  much  changed, 
though  by  whatever  means,  as  was  her  host's.  When  she 
threw  back  her  ermine  opera-cloak,  her  bust  and  shoulders 
of  warm  marble  shone,  in  flowing  curves  and  full  roundness, 
above  a  dress  that  matched  its  hat  and  clung  to  a  figure  which 
might  have  been  that  of  a  woman  of  thirty.  Her  yellow  hair 
had  an  alloyed  luster,  her  brows  seemed  darker  and  thicker, 
her  lashes  longer.  Her  cheeks  flamed,  her  laughing  lips  were 
as  red  as  blood,  and  the  hard  brilliance  of  her  eyes  made 
their  color  almost  indistinguishable. 

248 


VICTORIOUS  249 

"A  real  party!"  she  echoed,  peeling  off  her  long  gloves, 
while  a  great  red  purse  dangled  from  her  right  forearm. 
"I  told  you  Fd  let  you  know  some  time  when  I  was  free." 

"Yes.  Good  girl.  'S  a  good  dinner,  too,  wasn't?"  He  came 
toward  her,  closed  the  door,  and  began  to  help  her  with  her 
wrap. 

"I  love  Paillard's,"  she  vowed.  As  a  pampered  cat  stretches 
its  legs  under  caresses,  she  leaned  back  her  head  while  his 
hot  hands,  ostensibly  busied  with  the  satin  lining  of  the  opera- 
cloak,  lingered  over  the  still  smoother  skin  of  her  firm  shoul 
ders. 

"That  all  you  love?"  Holding  the  cloak  wide  with  both 
hands,  Garcia,  from  behind  her,  bent  his  smiling  face  to  her 
face  upturned. 

She  shook  her  yellow  curls. 

He  brought  his  arms  together,  but  they  closed  upon  the 
cloak  only.  She  had  darted  out  of  its  folds  and  was  laugh 
ing  at  him  from  across  the  table. 

"Oh,  what  a  man-in-a-hurry !"  she  taunted. 

Garcia  had,  in  fact,  not  drunk  that  evening  so  much  as 
was  usual  with  him— no  more  than  he  frequently  bore  from 
luncheon  to  the  rue  Ste.  Anne  without  any  hurt  to  his  cen 
soring  of  manuscripts  save  such  as  infuriated  the  correspond 
ents — but  the  wine  of  her  beauty,  the  sense  that  he  was  re 
venging  Andy's  blow,  while  they  strengthened  his  resolution, 
weakened  his  body  enough  now  to  make  cardinal  what  had 
been  venal.  His  smile  became  grim.  He  lurched  toward  her. 
Instantly,  Tac  barred  the  way. 

"Halte!"  cried  Sylvia. 

Tac  stood  still. 

"Damn  that  dog,"  Garcia  grumbled.  "Near  fell  over  him." 

"Id!"  she  commanded,  and  was  obeyed. 

"Don't  like  me,  the  brute." 

She  was  fondling  the  brute  provokingly.  On  her  knees, 
with  one  cheek  against  Tac's  head,  she  gave  the  lieutenant 
a  glimpse  of  her  pouting  mouth,  her  mocking  eyes.  "I  don't 
believe  you  like  him!"  She  pointed  to  the  knife-like  paper- 
cutter.  "I  believe  you'd  like  to  use  that  on  him,"  she  said. 


250  VICTORIOUS 

Garcia's  attempted  chuckle  was  ratHer  a  grant.  "Me  ?"  he 
answered.  "Crazy  'bout  him." 

He  unlocked  and  opened  a  closet  that  formed  the  upper 
part  of  the  Breton  desk,  took  out  some  bottles,  a  syphon  and 
glasses,  brought  them  to  the  table  and  then  relocked  the 
closet.  The  glasses  had  clinked  dangerously  as  he  carried 
them. 

"Helluva  country/'  he  said.  "Cold  as  pole,  but  can't  get 
ice." 

She  appeared  to  enjoy  the  joke,  and,  when  he  had  mixed 
two  brandies-and-soda,  raised  her  glass  so  that  it  touched  his. 

"To  our  better  acquaintance,"  she  said. 

"Bottoms  up!"  he  ordered,  and  she  drank  it,  her  bright 
eyes  looking  across  the  brim  into  his. 

He  poured  another  drink,  and  they  sat  down  to  it  in  the 
easy  chairs  beside  the  fire.  Garcia  prodded  the  coals  with  a 
poker;  Sylvia,  feline  still,  curled  herself  in  the  warmth  of 
the  resulting  blaze,  her  crimson  purse  lying  deep  in  her  crim 
son  lap.  The  light  from  the  flames  played  over  her  crimson 
dress,  her  white  bosom,  her  yellow  hair;  it  played  also  over 
the  lieutenant's  uniform  and  woolly  head;  it  played  on  Tac, 
lying  between  them. 

"You  can't  guess  when  it  was  I  first  saw  you  in  Paris," 
she  presently  said. 

He  looked  up,  lifted  his  glass  from  the  floor  and  drained 
it.  "I  'member  time  first  saw  you  stage  N'York." 

"Oh,  but  you  only  met  me  once  over  there  and  that  was 
in  a  crowd.  You  forgot  all  about  me." 

Above  the  last  drops,  he  shook  his  head.  "Never  forgot," 
he  said,  into  his  glass. 

"But  guess  when  I  first  saw  you  in  Paris." 

"Dunno."  He  put  down  the  glass  and  leaned  toward  her, 
his  gaze  fixed  at  her  breast.  "When  was?" 

"It  was  just  after  I  got  here,  when  I  made  my  first  visit 
to  the  provost-marshal's.  I  was  getting  my  'Y'  worker's  pass 
— the  one  I  showed  you  at  Paillard's  to-night.  You'd  come 
out  of  your  office  and  were  standing  in  the  hall  near  the 
doorway." 


VICTOEIOUS  251 

Garcia,  leaning  to  the  table,  poured  himself  some  more 
brandy-and-soda.  "Have  'nother  ?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Aw,  c'on!" 

"Well" — she  held  out  her  emptied  glass — "just  a  little  one : 
some  soda  with  a  little  brandy  in  it." 

"JsTo" — Garcia,  rising,  took  her  wrist  between  the  thumb 
and  finger  of  his  left  hand — "not  till  you  do  some'n  for." 

"Something  for  you  ?" 

"'S'what  said/3 

Her  mouth  drooped.   "What  do  you  want  me  to  do?" 

"Off  your  hat."    Garcia  burst  into  loud  laughter  and  re-  ' 
leased  her  wrist.  "Off  your  hat  an'  stay  a  while !" 

Without  a  word  she  raised  her  white  arms,  loosened  the 
hat  from  the  yellow  glory  of  her  hair  and  threw  the  crimson 
thing  across  the  room  to  where,  on  the  cJiaise  longue,  her 
cloak  lay. 

"There,"  she  said,  smiling  once  more.  "Now,  will  you  give 
me  a  drink?" 

He  shook  his  head.   "Be  good  li'l  girl:  say,  'Please/'2 

"Please,  teacher !" 

This  time  his  chuckle  was  untrammeled.  He  poured  a  stiff 
drink  and  handed  it  to  her.  He  put  the  syphon  back  upon 
the  table,  where  it  rested  drunkenly  on  the  paper-cutter's 
thick  steel  blade. 

"Oh !"  She  made  a  great  face  over  her  dram.  "That's  not 
soda  with  a  little  brandy  in  it." 

"What 't  is?"   He  swayed  before  her. 

"It's  brandy  with  a  little  soda." 

They  both  laughed.  She  put  down  her  untouched  glass  and 
resumed  her  chair;  he,  very  close  beside  her,  leaned  against 
the  table,  his  glass  in  his  hand.  Thick  though  his  speech  was, 
his  head  was  clear. 

"Provost-marsh'  office,"  he  reflected.  "Sure  remember." 
He  felt  his  wounded  chin;  he  straightened  up.  "Kid  with 
you,"  he  said. 

"A  kid?"    She  couldn't  recollect. 

"Young  know-it-all  Brown." 


2o2  VICTOEIOUS 

"Oh,  yes — of  course." 

She  would  have  dismissed  Andy  with  the  lightest  of  ges 
tures. 

"Been  runnin'  around  with  him  lots/'  he  insisted. 

"I  have?" 

"'S'what  said." 

"You  asked  me."  Her  full  eyes  could  hide  no  secret !  "I've 
always  reported." 

"No  use  overdoin'  9t"  He  frowned.  "Ain't  stuck  on  him ?" 

"On  Andy  Brown?"  Sylvia  laughed  at  the  idea.  "He's 
just  a  nice  boy." 

"  'S  damn  trouble-maker.   Tol'  you  that." 

"Yes,"  she  agreed,  "he's  a  trouble-maker;  but  trouble 
makers  are  just  the  kind  of  people  most  women  don't  care 
about." 

"Yes — "  Garcia's  brow  darkened.  "You  were  in  }s  rooms 
las'  night." 

She  smiled  her  scorn  of  the  insinuation,  a  scorn,  it  seemed, 
directed  not  so  much  at  the  implied  event  as  at  the  mentioned 
partner  in  it. 

"Of  course  I  was,"  she  said.  "I  just  told  you  you  asked 
me  to  keep  an  eye  on  him.  Here  was  a  chance.  I  was  at  the 
Theatre  Frangais  when  the  air-raid  came.  I  thought  he  was 
out  of  town." 

"Find  anythin'?" 

"No.  He  came  in  too  soon.  I  had  to  pretend  to  be  asleep." 

"Somebody  else  found,"  said  Garcia  slowly. 

"I  know.   He's  been  to  see  me.   He  told  me." 

"Did  he  tell  you" — the  mark  on  the  lieutenant's  face  burnt 
redder — "tell  you  he  saw  me  to-day?" 

"No.  What  did  he  say  to  you?" 

"Nothin'.    Scared  him." 

"You  mean  you  got  something?" 

"Got  interview  we'll  s'press."  Garcia  paused;  he  watched 
her  carefully.  "An'  some  letters." 

"Well?"  she  asked,  her  eyes  darkening. 

"To  a  girl,"  said  Garcia.    "Didn'  he  tell  you  what  girl?" 

"No.   I  don't  care  what  girl  it  was." 


VICTORIOUS  253 

"Oh,  don't  you?   Well,  I  know  her.    She's  a  peach." 

Again  he  reflected.    "My  girl/'  he  concluded. 

She  bit  her  lip.  She  had  been  thinking  all  the  time,  some 
how,  of  a  girl  back  home  in  Americus.  "That  goes  well,"  she 
presently  resumed,  "after  what  you've  been  saying  at  dinner 
about  all  you  thought  of  me" 

A  light  broke  on  Garcia.  "My  old  girl,"  he  corrected. 
"Now  why  d'you  say  he's  a  nice  boy?" 

One  of  her  slippered  fe'.J;  tapped  the  floor.  Its  buckle  glis 
tened  in  the  firelight. 

"He  used  to  be  that." 

Garcia  put  down  his  glass.  Placing  an  arm  on  the  back  of 
her  chair,  he  leaned  over  her. 

"Look  here:  mu?  n't  lose  your  head.  He's  just  kid;  can't 
do  anythin'  for  a  '  <rl." 

"He's  just  a  ki  ,"  she  reflected.  She  was  looking  at  the 
leaping  flames  in  the  grate  and  at  Tac,  lying  broad  awake 
before  them. 

"Innocent  kid,"  Garcia  insisted.   "Some  women  like  'em." 

"Can  you — "  She  gave  him  that  provoking  smile  again. 
— "Can  you  guess  who  it  is  I  like  ?" 

"Who?"    He  bent  closer.    "More'n  one,  I  bet  yo'." 

"Well,  one  just  now,  anyhow." — Alas,  poor  Andy! 

"Who  't  is?" 

"I  won't  tell." 

His  face  nearly  met  hers.    "Yes,  will.    Make  you." 

She  pushed  him  merrily  away. 

"Not  yet,"  she  said. 

Garcia  recovered  himself.  "Can't  do  anythin'  for  a  girl 
— he  can't.  No  money,  no  pull.  I  can." 

"Oh,  don't  let's  talk  about  him.  Andy  Brown!"  She 
laughed  Andy  away. 

"But  I  want  to  know—" 

"So  do  I."  She  faced  him  saucily.  "You  were  talking 
about  an  'old  girl':  I  saw  you  with  somebody  on  the  boule 
vard  a  day  or  two  ago." 

Garcia  squared  his  shoulders.    "Nothin'  to  it." 

"She  was  very  pretty." 


254  VICTOKIOUS 

"Oh,  pretty  'nough.    Nothin'  to  it,  though"." 

"Now,  now!"   A  raised  forefinger  admonished  him. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "I  tell  you.  Silly  kind  girl.  Got  crazy 
'bout  me.  Not  my  fault.  You're  a  woman:  know  how't  is." 

She  nodded  a  pensive  comprehension. 

"But  these  French  girls  no  idea  time.  No  matter  how 
much  love  you,  no  idea  time.  Never  gave  her  'couragement, 
hut  she'd  always  be  hangin'  'round.  Then  saved  her  life  yes 
terday  'n  big  gun  smashed  cafe,  an'  li'l  devil  didn't  keep  din 
ner  date  for  las'  night.  Loves  me,  but  no  grat — gratitude  an' 
absolutely  no  idea  time." 

"And  so  you're  coming  back  to  your  liking  for  American 
girls?" 

"Betcher  boots."  His  breath  broke  quickly.   "One  of  'em." 

Her  hands  were  on  the  arms  of  the  chair.  He  took  that 
nearer  him. 

The  touch  of  it  was  as  heady  as  Kussian-poppy  wine.  He 
gripped  it. 

"Sylv' !" 

She  rose  toward  him,  and  her  purse,  dislodged  by  this 
movement,  fell,  spewing  its  contents  on  the  floor  close  to 
Tac's  unbudging  nose. 

It  was  one  of  those  trivial  occurrences  which,  because  they 
come  from  without,  are  ever  an  effective,  though  temporary, 
interruption  to  passion.  Sylvia  gave  a  little  cry  and  stooped, 
under  her  admirer's  descending  lips,  to  recover  her  spilled 
treasures.  Garcia,  with  an  oath,  joined  her  in  the  search. 
Tac  snapped  at  him,  and  she  had  to  order  the  dog  away. 

They  seemed  to  have  gathered  everything  together  when 
Sylvia  exclaimed: 

"My  card !" 

"Your  what  ?"  asked  Garcia. 

"My  worker's  card:  my  *Y'  worker's  card." 

They  searched  for  it,  their  groping  hands  frequently  touch 
ing  on  the  fur  of  the  hearth-rug. 

"Can't  find  it,"  said  the  impatient  Garcia  at  last.  "Not 
here." 

"No"  —  she  rose  on  her  knees.     "I've  just  remembered. 


VICTOBIOUS  255 

Don't  you?  I  took  it  out  to  show  you  at  dinner.  It's  at 
Paillard's.  I  laid  it  beside  my  coffee-cup  and  never  put  it 
back." 

He  argued  with  her,  but  she  was  quite  certain  now.  When 
he  insisted  on  a  further  search  about  the  room,  the  results 
only  confirmed  her.  She  grew  a  little  sullen  and  withdrew 
her  hand  whenever  he  took  it. 

Finally  she  stood  upright.  "I've  simply  got  to  have  that 
card.  I  can't  go  anywhere  outside  of  Paris  without  it." 

"Oh,  hell !"  said  Garcia,  rising  also.  "Get  you  'nother  to 
morrow." 

"And  let  that  one  be  found  and  turned  in  to  the  'Y'  au 
thorities?  What  would  they  think?" 

"Well,  what  goin'  do  'bout  it?" 

She  fronted  him.  "I'm  sorry,  but  you'll  have  to  get  it  for 
me — to-night  before  the  restaurant  closes  at  nine-thirty." 

He  protested,  but  she  wouldn't  listen.  When  he  gave  way, 
it  was  scarcely  with  a  good  grace. 

"Then  you  come  'long." 

"You're  not  very  considerate."  Something  close  to  anger 
came  into  her  eyes  at  his  suggestion.  "I've  risked  enough, 
coming  in  here  once ;  I  won't  come  in  twice  in  the  same  night. 
No,  you  must  go  alone  and  let  me  wait.  If  you  make  me 
go  with  you,  I  won't  come  back.  Hurry — I  heard  it  strike 
nine  a  little  while  ago." 

Muttering  complaints,  he  got  into  his  overcoat.  He  went 
to  the  desk,  tried  it,  found  it  locked.  Then  he  approached 
her.  He  drew  very  close,  his  arms  open,  the  recaptured  sour 
smile  upon  his  lips. 

"Kiss  good-by,"  he  commanded. 

She  met  his  gaze  doubtingly.  Tac  was  standing  by  her  side. 

"Will  you  hurry?" 

"Course  will.  Want  get  back  t'you." 

"You — you  haven't  drunk  too  much  to  get  there?" 

"Drunk?"  He  straightened  himself.  "Cold  sober.  What- 
cher  mean,  drunk  ?" 

"Oh,  no ;  I  know.  I  didn't  mean  that.  Don't  stop  to  argue : 
I  believe  you.  Only  do — do — get  there  before  they  close !" 


£56  VICTORIOUS 

"Get  taxi  boulevard."  His  eyes  settled  on  her.  "You  wait." 

"Of  course  I  will." 

"Not  goin'  give  me  slip?" 

"If  I  do,"  she  said  seriously,  "keep  the  card  and  tell  the 
provost  marshal  not  to  issue  me  another." 

His  arms  passed  about  her.   "Then  kiss  good-by." 

He  lowered  his  face  and  she  raised  hers.  Their  gazes  met ; 
their  lips  drew  closer.  Where  now  was  Ste.  Jeanne  d'Arc? 

Suddenly  she  laughed.  "No,  not  yet.  If  I  kissed  you, 
you'd  never  go."  She  put  both  her  hands  against  his  breast 
and  pushed  until  she  was  free.  "I'll  keep  that  for  a  reward. 
When  you  give  me  the  pass,  I'll  kiss  you.  Now,  please  go !" 

II 

The  door  closed  after  him.  She  stood  by  the  table,  leaning 
lightly  on  it.  She  heard  the  street-door  close. 

She  was  changed  instantly  into  a  quick  and  frightened 
thing.  But  she  was  again  the  girl  that  Andy  knew. 

"Tac!"  she  whispered. 

The  dog  wagged  his  tail. 

Out  of  a  pocket  in  her  purse  she  drew  a  bit  of  cloth;  it 
was  the  piece  that  she  had  torn  from  the  lining  of  Andy's 
cap.  She  thrust  it  under  Tac's  pulsing  nostrils.  "Cherche!" 
she  commanded,  and  restored  the  keepsake  to  its  pocket. 

The  dog  laid  back  his  ears;  his  tail  tightened  low  between 
his  legs.  Sniffing  excitedly,  he  moved,  with  a  silent  quickness, 
about  the  room. 

"Vite!"  whispered  Sylvia. 

Minutes  passed.  His  nose  now  down,  now  up,  Tac  hur 
ried.  He  went  to  the  hearth-rug,  the  tables,  the  chairs.  He 
smelled  of  the  chaise  longue. 

"Vite,  mon  Men!"  pleaded  Sylvia.  "Cherche — vite — vite!" 

He  disappeared  into  the  bedroom,  but  was  out  again  before 
she  could  follow  him.  He  paused  at  the  carved  Breton  desk, 
but,  when  she  came  toward  it,  he  darted  away. 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  "vite — for  God's  sake,  Tac — pour  I' amour 
de  Dieu!" 


yiCTORIOUS  257 

He  made  a  fresh  circuit  of  the  room.  More  minutes  sped 
and  more :  a  quarter  of  an  hour. 

Sylvia  wrung  her  hands.  Tac's  pace  lagged.  Was  he  sur 
rendering  his  quest  ? 

Then  he  stopped  "before  the  carved  Breton  desk.  He  stood 
up  on  his  hind  legs  and  placed  his  forepaws  against  its  closed 
lid.  His  tail  flicked;  he  softly  whimpered. 

Sylvia  ran  to  the  desk :  it  was  indeed  locked.  She  scurried 
back  to  the  table,  overturned  the  syphon  and  seized  the  heavy 
paper-cutter  that  lay  beneath  it.  With  surprising  strength, 
she  plunged  it  into  the  crevice  that  ran  between  the  lid  and 
the  body  of  the  desk.  She  had  chosen  a  point  directly  over 
the  lock.  The  veins  stood  out  on  her  boyish  hands  as  she 
moved  the  blade  backward  and  forward. 

The  lock  was  old  and  stiff,  the  wood  was  thick — and  her 
time  grew  very  short.  She  wasted  five  minutes. 

Suddenly  she  went  mad  with  desperation:  she  withdrew 
the  knife,  held  it  above  her  head  and  thence,  shutting  her 
eyes,  drove  it  down  blindly. 

There  was  a  splintering  sound,  and  the  knife  fell  to  the 
floor.  She  looked:  the  knife  had  torn  the  wood  from  about 
the  lock;  the  desk  would  open  at  a  touch. 

She  flung  it  wide.  Was  there  yet  time  for  a  search  ?  There 
was,  at  all  events,  no  need:  there,  before  her,  lay  a  pile  of 
letters  and,  beneath  them,  a  manuscript  in  Andy's  hand. 

Under  the  lamp  on  the  table,  she  made  sure  of  her  find  in 
another  glance  and  put  it  into  her  breast.  She  took  up  the 
letters;  she  had  not  meant  to  look  at  them,  but  how,  she 
asked  herself,  was  she  to  know  them  for  the  right  ones  unless 
she  did  look  at  them?  She  would  look;  she  did. 

They  were  in  the  same  hand  as  that  which  penned  the 
manuscript. 

They  were  addressed  to  her! 

She  staggered  against  the  table,  and  Tac,  his  tail  wagging 
with  the  rapid  joy  of  pride,  gave  a  quick  lick  to  her  unoccu 
pied  hand.  She  pressed  the  letters  wildly  to  her  lips.  She 
thrust  them  into  her  breast,  ran  to  the  chaise  longue,  picked 
up  and  put  on  her  hat,  flung  her  cloak  over  her  shoulders — 


258  VICTORIOUS 

"Card  wasn't  there/5  said  Garcia. — "What  in  liell  liave  you 
been  up  to  ?" 

in 

He  stood  in  the  open  doorway,  and  realization  of  her  du 
plicity  sobered  him.  His  lips  writhed  frightfully,  and  he 
leaped  toward  Sylvia. 

She  sprang  behind  the  table. 

He  bent  across  it.  His  face  had  tightened;  he  was  chalky 
white. 

"Hand  'em  over !"  he  commanded. 

She  looked  at  the  door.  She  couldn't  make  it.  Then  she 
gave  him  gaze  for  gaze. 

"I  won't,"  she  said. 

"Then" — still  bending  over  It,  he  edged  round  the  table 
—"I'll  take  'em,  and,  by  the  Lord  God,  I'll  take  you,  too !" 

"Attaque!"  cried  Sylvia. 

Something  brown  shot  over  the  table's  edge  and  struck 
Garcia  full  upon  the  chest.  With  tremendous  force  it  struck 
him — crashed  with  him  to  the  floor — stood  over  him,  and,  as 
he  lay  supine,  he  looked  up  into  Tac's  opened  muzzle. 

"Halte!"  commanded  Sylvia.  "Bouge  pas! — If  you  move 
a  hair's  breadth,"  she  calmly  warned  Garcia,  "he  will  kill 
you." 

Garcia  answered  with  a  curse,  but  he  did  not  stir. 

"I  am  going  now,"  she  concluded.  "When  I  get  to  the 
street-door,  I'll  call  him.  You  had  better  not  try  to  overtake 
me  while  he  lies  between  us." 

IV 

At  her  appeal  of  "Cordon"  the  invisible  concierge  snapped 
on  the  hall  light  as  he  opened  for  her  the  front  door.  The 
light  fell  full  on  her  and  on  Tac,  who  at  this  instant  joined 
her  there. 

The  exit  brought  to  pause,  in  the  shadows  across  the  street, 
somebody  that  had  been  about  to  call  on  Garcia.  This  person 
saw  her,  and  saw  the  dog.  He  saw  her,  as  she  turned  toward 


"VICTOEIOUS  259 

the  boulevards  in  search  of  a  taxi-cab,  pull  something  from 
her  breast  and  put  it  to  her  lips. 

He  did  not  pursue  his  purpose.  He  slid  into  the  shadows 
of  the  rue  Mont  Thabor.  He  was  shaken  by  sudden  sobs. 
He  had  recognized  Sylvia  coming  out  of  Garcia's  rooms  by 
night  and  kissing  a  love-token. 

He  was  Andy  Brown. 


CHAPTEE  XIX 

HOW  MISS  HATTIE  DISCOVEEED  A  LITTLE,  AND  CHRISSLY 
LOST  A  GEEAT  DEAL 

ALTHOUGH,  "Over  There,"  men  began  to  tremble,  "Back 
Home"  continued,  by  and  large,  ignorantly  and  almost  joy 
ously  confident.  It  was  a  sin  to  grumble ;  it  would  have  been 
a  crime  to  suspect.  The  whole  country  fasted  with  the  enthu 
siasm  of  a  new  convert  to  a  stern  sect.  It  made  a  joke  of 
freezing;  lightless  nights,  meatless  days  and  wheatless:  the 
people  observed  them  as  one  dons  a  decoration.  Nothing  was 
more  wonderful  than  the  rapidity  with  which  the  nation  made 
itself  at  home  in  a  totally  strange  environment.  Just  now  a 
sale  of  war-bonds  was  approaching:  men  looked  forward  to 
it  as  if  it  were  a  fete.  True,  the  enemy  again  neared  the  gates 
of  Paris;  but  was  not  the  American  army  about  to  fight? 
Washington  sent  forth  magnificent  descriptions  of  aeroplane 
production,  of  great  guns  in  the  making  and  of  ammunition 
manufactured  in  Gargantuan  quantities  and  with  miraculous 
speed.  The  Administration  talked  in  the  vast  figures  that 
the  native  mind  adores:  we  were  ourselves,  tremendous, 
magic,  unconquerable.  So  was  it  in  big  cities  and  little  towns, 
and  so  in  Americus. 

Meanwhile,  Miss  Hattie  Lloyd  was  busy,  and  her  grudge 
grew  apace  against  the  power  of  the  daughter  of  a  dentist  who 
had  once  extracted  the  wrong  tooth  by  mistake. 

In  her  lonely  home,  she  opened  ancient  chests-of-drawers, 
took  out  faded  daguerreotypes  and  pictures  of  little  boys 
that  were  now  old  men,  and  she  read  many  yellowed  letters. 
She  was  trying  to  remember  something  that  she  had  for 
gotten. 

She  made  a  trolley-trip  to  Doncaster  and  visited  the  court- 

260 


VICTOKIOUS  261 

house.  When  she  came  back,  she  went  straight  from  the  car 
to  Lawyer  Dickey's  office. 

"James,"  she  said,  "I've  been  looking  up  the  title  to  that 
house  Ralph  Bolingbroke  loaned  to  the  Eed  Cross."  She 
cocked  her  head.  "There's  something  queer  about  it." 

"Poof!"  said  the  old  lawyer.  "How  do  you  know  how  to 
look  up  a  title?" 

"I  don't :  I  made  the  young  man  there  do  it  for  me.  The 
deeds  go  up  to  Joe  Tollens'  time,  and  then  there's  a  gap  till 
Ralph  got  it."  Miss  Hattie  gave  herself  a  little  hug.  "Ralph's 
got  a  lot  of  things  in  this  town,  and  umbrellas  aren't  all: 
has  he  got  everything  according  to  law?" 

"Of  course  he  has,"  Dickey  sought  to  assure  her.  "He's 
not  a  robber." 

"Well,"  Miss  Hattie  persisted,  "he  doesn't  seem  to  have 
much  to  show  for  the  way  he  got  that  house.  I  don't  believe  he 
has  any  right  to  it,  and  I  believe  Sarah  knows  it.  I  believe 
she  knows  something  and  just  won't  tell  because  she's  got  so 
much  of  the  old  Tollens  pride  in  her.  The  young  man  in 
the  court-house  said  it  looked  queer.  It  is  queer;  you've  got 
to  admit  it  is." 

Mr.  Dickey  scratched  his  head.  Reluctantly,  he  took  up  the 
telephone  and  called  Ralph  Bolingbroke's  office  at  the  factory : 
the  lawyer  had  had  a  telephone  installed  in  violation  of  his 
principles,  and  he  used  it  on  this  occasion  as  one  uses  a  nec 
essary  but  unworthy  tool. 

"Ralph,"  he  said  into  the  transmitter,  "about  that  house 
of  yours  that  the  Red  Cross  is  using:  how'd  you  get  it? — 
What? — A  bad  debt? — Yes,  I  just  want  to  satisfy  a  possible 
purchaser" — he  winked  shamefacedly  at  Miss  Hattie — "who's 
in  my  office  now.— Yes.— They  did?  The  Tidds?— How  did 
they  get  it? — Oh,  I  see:  adverse  possession.  Thank  you." 

He  hung  up  the  receiver. 

"There  you  are,"  he  said  in  a  voice  that  indicated  fear 
lest  the  telephone  should  hear  him.  "The  Bolingbrokes  got 
the  house  for  a  bad  debt  from  the  Tidds,  and  the  Tidds  got 
it  from  Tollens  through  adverse  possession." 

Miss  Hattie  blinked  rapidly.    "What's  that?" 


262  VICTORIOUS 

"Possession  against  legal  right/'  Mr.  Dickey  looked  about 
him  at  the  rows  of  calf-bound  law-books.  "It  has  to  be  hos 
tile,  continuous,  exclusive,  actual  and  visible." 

"Does  it?"  said  Miss  Hattie.   "Then  what  is  it?" 

"If  you  own  a  house  and  let  a  man  live  in  it  without  pay 
ing  rent — " 

"In  other  words,  if  you're  a  fool,"  Miss  Hattie  suggested. 

" — and  if,"  continued  Mr.  Dickey,  "he  keeps  telling  people 
that  it's  his  house,  why,  after  a  while,  it  is  his." 

"The  Tidds  did  that  to  Joe  Tollens !" 

"Ralph  says  so." 

"And  he  let  them— Joe  did?" 

"That's  what  Ralph  says." 

"Well" — Miss  Hattie  rose — "I  can  almost  believe  it:  it 
sounds  just  like  Joe  Tollens."  She  smoothed  her  black  silk 
skirt.  "Thank  you,  James." 

"Don't  mention  it,"  said  the  lawyer. 

"How  long  does  the  person  have  to  live  in  the  house  ?" 

"To  acquire  it  by  adverse  possession?   Twenty  years." 

"Thank  you,"  said  Miss  Hattie  again,  and  stalked  out  of 
the  office. 

II 

Mr.  Dickey  was  still  flurried  by  this  visit  when,  next  morn 
ing,  Colonel  Eskessen  dropped  in. 

"I  never  saw  such  a  woman  as  Hattie  Lloyd,"  the  lawyer 
complained.  "She  keeps  on  questioning  Ralph  Bolingbroke's 
right  to  the  old  Tidd  house — and  after  all  the  splendid  Red 
Cross  work  Mrs.  Ralph's  done."  He  told  his  friend  all  about  it. 

"Is  the  place  worth  much?"  asked  the  colonel,  reflectively 
patting  his  poll. 

"There's  been  an  offer  of  ten  thousand  as  it  stands." 

"Well,  Miss  Hattie  talks  a  lot,  but  she  generally  has  some 
thing  to  go  on." 

"Nonsense,  Kai !"  Mr.  Dickey  swore  softly. 

"Let's  see,"  the  colonel  imperturbably  ruminated :  "Sarah 
Brown  was  born  the  same  year  as  my  cousin  Kate's  boy, 
George.  That'd  make  her — .  Yes,  George'd  be  forty  now,  if 


VICTOKIOUS  263 

he'd  lived;  Kate  spoke  of  it  in  a  letter  I  got  from  her  last 
week.  And  Joe  Tollens  lived  in  the  Tidd  house  when  his 
father  died.  When  did  old  man  Tollens  die,  Jim?" 

"I  don't  care  when  he  died." 

"I  think  he  died  in  '79  or  '80.  Then  if  Joe  left  the  place 
to  go  to  Mt.  Horeb,  he  must  have  done  it  inside  of  two  years, 
for  an  estate's  got  to  be  settled  within  two  years,  hasn't  it? 
That  would  make  it —  Why,  Jim" — the  colonel's  mild  eyes 
widened — "allowing  I'm  a  year  out  of  the  way,  and  calculat 
ing  the  Tidds  moved  in  right  off,  they  couldn't  have  been 
there  over  nineteen  years." 

The  lawyer  stood  up ;  he  began  to  pace  the  room.  The  two 
men  racked  their  memories,  recalled  dates,  argued;  but  the 
colonel  won  his  argument. 

"Thunder !"  said  Mr.  Dickey.  "I  don't  know  what  to  do. 
I  wish —  Why  can't  Hattie  Lloyd  let  well  enough  alone? 
Of  course,  Ealph'll  do  the  right  thing — no  question  about 
that:  Ealph'll  do  the  right  thing." 

When  Blunston  passed,  they  called  him  in  as  a  friend  of 
Sarah's.  He  heard  the  well-meaning  pair  in  silence.  Only 
when,  with  an  appeal  for  his  advice,  the  lawyer  concluded, 
did  Blunston  offer  a  suggestion;  but  what  he  then  said  was 
effective: 

"Why  worry  Bolingbroke?  You  told  me  Miss  Hattie  thinks 
Sarah  knows  all  about.  ...  If  she'd  wanted  anything  done, 
it  seems  to  me  she  would  have  done  it  long  ago,  or  else.  .  .  . 
In  short,  it's  her  affair.  .  .  .  It's  not  yours,  it's  not  mine.  I 
really  don't  see.  .  .  ." 

Put  that  way,  it  was  not  any  more  visible  to  Mr.  Dickey 
or  Colonel  Eskessen. 

in 

To  an  Americus  occupied  with  such  matters  Chrissly  re 
turned  from  France.  Notification  that  he  was  to  go  seemed 
scarce  to  have,  reached  the  hospital  before  the  form  of  his 
release  followed.  His  leave  would  be  short,  and  most  of  it 
would  be  passed  as  a  sort  of  war-exhibit,  carried  about  from 
one  Liberty  Loan  meeting  to  another  under  orders  from  the 


264  VICTOEIOUS 

committee  charged  with  raising  Doncaster  County's  quota; 
but  it  meant  home,  or  a  glimpse  of  home,  and  he  started  on 
the  journey  without  another  chance  to  see  Andy  and  with 
no  awakening  of  the  stunned  memory  from  which  the  shock 
of  an  exploding  shell  had  blown  Leonie's  image.  From  Phil 
adelphia  he  sent  two  telegrams  announcing  his  approach :  one 
was  addressed,  in  accord  with  instructions,  to  Colonel  Es- 
kessen,  the  only  member  of  the  Loan  Committee  that  lived  in 
Americus;  the  other  Chrissly  knew  would  amaze  his  father 
by  being  conveyed  to  him  from  the  telephone  nearest  the 
Shuman  farm,  a  matter  of  eight  miles. 

The  evening  train  was  slow,  and  Chrissly  grew  restless 
long  before  it  entered  the  Americus  yards.  He  had  been  wor 
rying  because  of  the  sense  of  something  gone  from  his  life, 
something  nameless,  yet  of  paramount  import ;  worrying  over 
the  speeches  that  he  would,  he  was  told,  be  expected  to  make 
— for  much  of  his  rusticity  had  returned  when  the  conscious 
ness  of  Leonie  left  him — worrying  because,  though  sure  that 
his  country  would  somehow  grope  its  way  to  victory  in  the 
end,  he  was  aware  of  much  that  was  at  present  ill,  and  vaguely 
apprehensive  of  immediate  consequences.  He  began  to  wander 
up  and  down  the  aisle  of  the  dim  smoking-car;  he  fell  into 
desultory  conversation  with  an  elderly  traveling  salesman; 
but  his  walk  only  made  him  more  restless,  and  he  was  ap 
palled  to  find  that  he  had  nothing  which  appeared  to  interest 
the  blood-thirsty  drummer  when  that  person,  discovering  the 
fact  of  his  foreign  service,  assailed  him  with  questions  about 
the  war. 

"What's  it  like?"  echoed  Chrissly.  "Oh,  how  do  I  know? 
It's  wet,  just,  an'  noisy — an'  it's  org  cold." 

"But  the  killin'?"  urged  the  salesman.  "Didn't  you  do 
for  a  couple  of  Dutch  ?" 

"Huh?  I—  Why,  what's  all  the  noise  still?-"  The  train 
was  nearing  the  station  at  last.  Chrissly  escaped  his  perse 
cutor  by  throwing  up  a  window  and  letting  in  a  blast  of 
whistles  and  a  ringing  of  many  bells.  "They  must  be  a  fire 
or  somesing." 

The  train  stopped.   Station  and  street  were  crowded.   The 


VICTORIOUS  265 

noise  was  deafening;  there  were  torches  and  flags  and  cheer 
ing  people  and  a  band. 

"Young  fellow,"  said  the  drummer,  "I  guess  you're  the 
fire!" 

IV 

They  bundled  him  out  and  hugged  him  and  huzzawed  for 
him — hundreds  of  them,  people  he  had  known  only  to  bow 
to  across  his  father's  market-stall  and  more  people  that  he 
did  not  know  at  all.  With  that  strange  sense  of  loss  adding 
to  this  sense  of  a  new  Chrissly  in  a  new  Americus,  he  was 
hustled  through  a  hand-shaking,  back-slapping  throng  and, 
almost  at  once,  found  himself  following  a  fresh  silk  flag  and 
the  Silver  Cornet  Band  over  Second  Street  and  up  brilliantly 
lighted  and  yellingly  lined  Elm  Avenue  at  the  head  of  a  pa 
rade  composed  of  the  Elks,  the  Eagles,  the  Moose  and  the 
Owls,  of  the  local  platoon  of  State  Militia,  factory-workers, 
school-children  and  the  Girls'  Patriotic  League,  in  the  glare 
of  red  lights  and  the  splutter  of  Roman-candles  and  under 
the  everywhere  evident  marshalship  of  "Babe"  Campbell  in 
full  uniform. 

"So  you're  back,  Chris  Shuman,"  some  one  in  the  rank 
behind  him  called  above  the  clamor.  "You  must  want  to  hear 
all  the  news  and  things  that's  happened  in  Americus  since 
you  went  to  France." 

Chrissly  suddenly  found  himself  embraced  by  a  dispropor 
tionately  tall  person,  who  seemed  to  have  been  his  childhood's 
bosom  friend,  yet  whom  he  recognized  as  Mr.  Bolingbroke, 
head  of  the  town's  umbrella-factory,  who  had  never  before 
exchanged  with  him  any  phrases  save  those  of  trade.  Ralph, 
with  genial  condescension,  took  up  the  talk :  "The  old  place 
keeps  going  right  along,"  he  said. 

Chrissly  grinned  and  nodded.  He  couldn't  stop  grinning, 
and  he  couldn't  talk. 

"We're  mighty  glad  to  have  you,"  said  Ralph— "migh-ty 
glad,  Mr.  Shuman.    We  had  only  an  hour's  warning,  but  I 
got  up  the  parade  without  the  least  trouble  in  the  world." 
,     The  crowd  along  the  street  kept  up  a  continuous  roarc 


266  VICTORIOUS 

"To  hell  with  the  Germans!"  called  some  of  the  crowd;  it 
struck  Chrissly  that  this  hatred  of  the  enemy  was  a  little  too 
vocal.  But  they  were  glad  to  see  him ;  there  was  no  mistaking 
that !  Every  now  and  then  a  man  jumped  forward  and  shook 
his  hand  and  jumped  back  again;  once,  somebody  plucked  at 
his  khaki  overcoat  and  he  turned  in  time  to  see  the  flutter 
of  a  disappearing  skirt  and  to  wonder  if  it  was  Minnie's. 
There  was  an  ache  in  his  head — an  ache,  as  it  were,  in  his 
memory — but,  though  he  felt  very  foolish,  he  felt  very  proud ; 
he  had  never  felt  so  proud  before :  he  hoped  his  father  and 
mother  had  got  their  telegram  in  time  to  be  here. 

"Gee,"  said  Chrissly — the  grin  was  fixed  on  his  face;  he 
was  sure  it  would  never  go  away — "gee,  but  this  here's  a  good 
town !" 

They  swept  him  up  the  Opera  House  steps;  they  jostled 
around  him  and  cheered,  and  the  band  played  The  S tar-Span 
gled  Banner  and  all  the  people  took  their  hats  off  and  Chrissly, 
between  the  chief  burgess  and  Ralph  Bolingbroke,  stood  at 
salute  above  the  crowd. 

"Speech!"  cried  two  or  three  persons,  and  at  once  every 
body  was  crying :  "Speech !" 

Chrissly — but  he  was  grinning  still — looked  appealingly  at 
Ralph. 

"Go  on,  talk  to  'em,"  said  Ralph. 

"Oh,  no,"  Chrissly  stammered.    "I  can't." 

"Sure  you  can,"  Ralph  insisted :  "you've  got  to." 

He  himself  stepped  forward  and  introduced  Chrissly : 
"The  first  hero  of  Americas  to  come  home  from  the  war. 
He  left  us  a  farm-boy;  he  returns  a  veteran  soldier.  Three 
cheers  for  Chrissly  Shuman,  who's  going  to  tell  you  how  he 
killed  his  share  of  the  Huns." 

They  all  wanted  to  hear  about  killing;  they  did  not  want 
to  hear  about  anything  else.  With  a  high-pitched,  nervous 
Voice,  Chrissly  tried  to  tell  them  of  the  training-camp,  but 
stuttered  and  stumbled  over  it:  he  was  interrupted  by  cries 
for  horrors.  He  endeavored  to  talk  of  the  dreariness  and  filth 
of  the  trenches,  but  no  Roman  amphitheater  ever  so  demanded 
blood. 


VICTORIOUS  267 

He  vocally  fumbled;  he  stopped.  Then,  suddenly,  it  came 
to  him :  they  had  paid  him  with  their  welcome ;  he  must  give 
them  what  they  asked.  He  was  giving  it  before  he  had  any 
idea  how  the  adventure  would  turn  out: 

".  .  .  my  ozzer  two  pals  dead  there  aside  o'  me,  so's  I  was 
the  only  one  alive  still,  an'  them  sree  Germans  comin'  right 
at  me.  The  first  of  'em,  him  I  gave  the  last  cartridge  I  had 
left  yet,  an'  the  next  one  I  let  him  have  my  bay'net ;  an'  then 
I  yanked  it  out  an'  give  the  sird  fellow  the  butt  just  as  the 
second  he  was  go  in'  to  stick  me !" 

He  reached  the  unexpected  climax  at  exactly  the  moment 
when  he  saw  his  father's  face  approaching  him  by  movements 
of  the  burly  paternal  shoulders  through  the  crowd.  If  he  had 
seen  it  a  second  earlier,  he  would  have  been  unable  to  finish ; 
but  time  was  kind,  and  the  renewed  cheers  of  the  crowd 
saved  him. 


"Chrissly,"  said  his  father,  as  they  drove  homeward,  "we 
gotta  hurry  some.  It's  Saturday  to-morrow,  an'  you're  to 
help  me  tend  market." 

"Yes,  pap,"  said  Chrissly. 

"An'  Chrissly,"  said  his  father — nor  did  he  ever  again  refer 
to  the  ovation  of  Americus — "you're  a  good  boy — a  real  good 
boy.  'F  I  was  you,  Chrissly,  I  wouldn't  lie  no  more  about 
killin'  sree  Germans  wis  one  gun." 

yi 

When,  an  hour  later,  he  had  passed  up  the  familiar  path 
and  flung  himself  upon  the  ample  bosom  of  the  mother  sil 
houetted  in  the  lamplit  doorway,  the  tears  that  rained  upon 
his  face  were  not  all  her  tears :  glad  as  he  had  been  to  start 
for  home,  he  had  not  guessed  how  good  it  would  be  to  arrive 
there.  He  returned  kiss  for  kiss;  he  walked  about  the  house, 
touching  the  remembered  furniture  to  make  certain  of  its  re 
ality  ;  he  even  entered  the  parlor,  generally  sacred  to  weddings 
and  funerals,  and  sat  on  one  of  its  stiff  horsehair-cushioned 


268  VICTORIOUS 

chairs  and  vowed  that  it  was  good  to  rest  on  something  soft 
again.  He  ate  hugely  of  the  huge  supper  that  was  waiting 
him;  he  babbled  Pennsylvania  Dutch  as  if  he  had  never 
known  another  idiom,  and  when  at  last  he  tumbled  into  bed 
— into  a  high  feather-bed — he  was  prepared  to  nurse  there 
but  two  sensations:  delight  in  homecoming  and  relief  that 
his  pacifistie  parents  avoided  the  subject  of  war. 

Yet  there  was  something  lacking.  The  ache  in  his  head 
throbbed  for  deliverance.  Unless  it  was  Minnie,  he  could 
think  of  nothing  that  he  did  not  have.  He  would  see  Minnie 
on  the  morrow.  .  .  . 

But  was  it  Minnie? 

Throughout  the  voyage  across,  he  had  been  too  anxious  for 
home  to  analyze  his  trouble.  Now  he  could  not  analyze  it. 
Often,  as  a  boy,  he  had  come  back  from  market  with  the  sense 
that  he  had  forgotten  some  commission  that  should  have  been 
executed  in  Americus,  but  the  nature  of  which  it  was  impos 
sible  to  recall.  This  was  like  that;  but  it  was  more  intensi 
fied.  .  .  . 

He  tried  to  go  over  all  that  had  happened  to  him  since 
his  arrival  in  France,  and  found  that  it  was  everywhere  hazy. 
Among  the  people  he  had  seen  there,  no  individual  was  dis 
tinct.  There  was  some  individual  that  he  wanted  to  'remem 
ber:  some  one  that  had  either  hurt  him  very  much  or  been 
very  kind  to  him.  Who  was  it,  and  why  should  this  person  be 
important  ? 

Chrissly  stretched  out  his  arms  and  legs  in  the  soft  luxury 
of  the  bed.  He  had  not  slept  in  a  real  bed  since  leaving  home. 

That  person — it  must  be  Minnie.   .   .   . 

Chrissly  fell  asleep. 

VII 

That  was  in  Pennsylvania.  In  the  black  attic-room  of  a 
village-tavern  in  Meurthe-et-Moselle,  a  French  girl  was  lying 
rigid  on  her  narrow  mattress  and  staring  into  the  darkness 
above  her — staring  hard,  as  if  it  were  possible  to  pierce  it 
and  to  find,  beyond  it,  the  face  of  some  one  swallowed  by  the 
night  of  war. 


CHAPTEE  XX 

BUT    WHAT   ABOUT    ANDY? 

God!"  said  McGregor. 

Garcia  had  been  saying  a  great  deal — not  the  details  of 
how  Andy's  papers  had  been  secured  or  of  how,  once  secured, 
they  were  lost — but  enough  to  justify  the  contractor,  who 
never  cared  for  anything  save  results,  in  his  ejaculation. 

"Good  God!"  said  McGregor  again. 

He  stood  behind  one  of  his  living-room's  gilt  chairs,  and 
his  pudgy  hands  twisted  its  back  until  Garcia,  pale  and  ner 
vous  before  him,  thought  the  frail  woodwork  would  snap. 

"You  told  me  not  to  pull  the  rough  stuff,"  said  Garcia. 

"And  what  do  you  call  what  you  did  pull?"  McGregor  de 
manded.  "You  rob  his  rooms — " 

"The  censorship  wanted  to  delay  that  interview  till  it  was 
a  dead  one." 

"I  don't  care  a  damn  about  the  censorship;  all  I'm  inter 
ested  in's  planes,  and  you  know  it." 

"I  thought  it'd  be  a  good  thing  to  get  something  on  him." 

"And  what  did  you  get?  A  few  love-letters  that  he  never 
sent !" 

Garcia  raised  malicious  eyes.  "He  had  that  •woman  up 
there.  We  found  that  out." 

"In  an  air-raid.    You  said  so  yourself." 

"Nobody'd  believe  she  went  there  for  that.   I  don't." 

"You  wouldn't. — Well,  I  do.  I  may  have  my  doubts  about 
her,  but  I  haven't  got  any  about  him.  He's  a  clean  straight 
boy.  Anybody  with  any  sense'd  know  you  couldn't  get  any 
thing  of  that  kind  on  him.  All  I  wanted  was  to  get  him 
where  he  couldn't  hurt  my  aeroplane  business:  that's  why  I 
fixed  it  so's  he  could  be  given  a  commission.  And  how  did 

269 


270  VICTOEIOUS 

you  go  about  that  part  of  the  job?  Did  you  play  up  to  his 
patriotism  ?  You  did  not !  You  offered  him  a  lieutenancy, 
or  a  captaincy,  or  whatever  it  was,  the  way  I'd  offer  a  hun 
dred-dollar  bill  to  a  town  councilman  that  I  wanted  to  vote 
for  a  franchise !  I  hope  he  knocked  you  down." 

Garcia  turned  away. 

"Come  back  here,"  ordered  McGregor.  "Look  up/'  And 
when  he  had  been  reluctantly  obeyed:  "You've  spilled  the 
beans.  I  can't  make  another  move  against  Brown — we've  lost 
every  chance  of  him.  But  I  can  do  something  for  you :  I  can 
pay  you  for  your  raw  work.  I  said  I'd  do  it — I  warned  you — 
and  now  I'm  going  to  make  good."  Gripping  the  chair  with 
both  hands,  the  contractor  leaned  across  it;  his  little  eyes 
shone  ominously  above  bags  of  fat  turned  a  dull  brown. 
"You're  going  back  to  line-work,  Garcia.  I'll  fix  that  before 
luncheon !" 

Eage  and  terror  pulled  at  the  lieutenant's  lips.  "If  you 
try  that—" 

"You  won't  do  anything,"  McGregor  interrupted.  "You 
can't  touch  me,  but  I  could  send  you  to  Leavenworth  on  any 
one  of  a  dozen  counts.  Instead  of  that,  I'm  only  going  to 
have  you  sent  to  the  front;  I'm  only  going  to  give  you  a 
chance  to  make  a  man  of  yourself." 

Terror  won  Garcia,  His  mouth  twitched;  tears  came  into 
his  eyes. 

"Mr.  McGregor,  please !  You  know  I'm  no  soldier ;  you 
know  I—" 

"Get  out  of  here !"  said  McGregor. 

"But,  Mr.  McGregor—" 

The  contractor  raised  a  short  arm;  his  pointing  finger  in 
dicated  the  door.  "Get  out !" 

Garcia  knew  that  his  cause  was  lost.  He  stumbled  away. 
With  his  hand,  however,  on  the  knob,  he  turned  to  McGregor 
a  face  black  with  spite. 

"You're  crazy  over  that  kid,"  he  said.  "I  believe  you  think 
more  about  him  than  3*ou  do  about  your  contracts.  Well,  you 
needn't  bank  on  getting  him  out  of  trouble.  You've  started 
something  you  can't  stop.  I've  got  Brown  framed." 


VICTORIOUS  271 

ii 

McGregor,  when  the  door  had  closed,  wrote  a  note  and  sent 
it  by  messenger  to  Andy's  rooms :  he  asked  Andy  to  come  at 
once  to  see  him.  Within  the  hour,  he  had  his  answer: 

"DEAR  MR.  MCGREGOR — Thank  you,  but  I'd  rather  not. 
We  don't  think  alike,  so  what's  the  use  of  talking?  And, 
besides,  I  don't  want  to  see  anybody  just  now. 

"Yours  truly, 
"A.  McK.  BROWST." 

in 

Andy  was  living  in  a  darkened  world,  darkly.  He  was 
living  in  a  Paris  the  mood  of  which  was  but  as  the  shadow  of 
his  own  cast  tremendously  against  the  sky.  The  Germans 
were  at  the  gates,  the  Allies  were  weakening;  America  had 
failed  the  Allies,  and  Sylvia  had  failed  his  ideal. 

On  the  day  that  he  heard  from  McGregor,  he  heard  from 
her.  She,  too,  asked  him  to  come  to  see  her,  and  to  her  also 
he  sent  a  refusal.  All  dreams  were  false. 

There  are  few  entries  in  his  note-book  for  this  time,  but 
of  these  a  few  are  worth  transcription : 

"Friday      9        P.  M.  Air-raid.  Three  hours. 

"Saturday  7 :30  A.  M.  Bombardment  by  big  gun,  continued 

till  4  P.  M. 

9:30  P.M.  Air-raid. 

"Sunday     7        A.  M.  Big  gun  again.  Till  3 :30. 

"Monday    1         A.  M.  Air-raid. 

6         A.  M.  Big  gunning. 
"I  don't  care!)f 

It  was  fitting  that  she  should  fail  just  when  democracy 
was  failing;  they  had  been  intertwined  in  all  his  visions; 
they  were  inseparable.  He  tried  to  think  of  neither,  and 
thought  of  nothing  else. 

The  whole  world  had  changed;  the  world  of  yesterday  was 
dead.  It  had  been  murdered  and,  with  its  life-blood,  his  own 


272  VICTOKIOUS 

life-blood,  the  life-blood  of  all  that  mattered  in  him,  had 
flown  into  the  street  and  dried  there,  a  clotted  thing,  the  food 
of  hideous  flies.  Proved  impotent  at  crisis — impotent  or  un 
willing — the  entire  American  effort  had  turned  to  a  cynical 
joke,  and  she  who  had  symbolized  it — she,  too,  was  a  thing 
for  laughter. 

"If  any  one  calls  for  me,"  he  instructed  the  concierge,  "say 
that  I  have  gone  to  the  American  camp.  I  don't  want  to 
see  anybody." 

"Not,"  asked  Mme.  Lafon— "not  anybody?" 

"Nobody." 

"But  if" — the  concierge  smiled — "if  somebody  called  like 
the  pretty  mademoiselle  that  monsieur  found  in  his  room 
some  evenings  since — " 

"Her  especially,"  said  Andy.   But  he  did  not  expect  her. 

That  very  evening,  on  his  return  home  from  a  dismal  din 
ner  with  Evans,  Mme.  Lafon  said  Sylvia  had  been  to  the 
house  and  asked  for  him. 

"What  did  you  tell  her?" 

Madame  shrugged.  "What  would  you?  What  monsieur 
told  me  to  tell,  my  faith !" 

(There  was  a  snake  in  his  heart.  "Don't  see  her."  it  whis 
pered.  "She  is  trying  to  cozen  you  again.  You  have  missed 
her:  let  her  go.") 

rv 

The  neighbors  watched  every  clear  sunset  with  the  certainty 
of  a  nocturnal  attack.  The  sirens  would  utter  their  terrify 
ing,  long  drawn  out  shrieks,  and  the  population  would  make 
for  its  cellars. 

By  day,  the  long-distance  gun — "Bertha,"  they  called  it — 
made  the  streets  almost  as  uncomfortable  as  the  air-raids 
made  them  by  night.  A  restaurant  was  blown  to  bits;  every 
twenty-four  hours,  people  were  killed;  on  Good  Friday  came 
the  destruction  of  St.  Gervais,  when  the  service  of  a  congre 
gation  already  in  black  was  interrupted  forever.  The  husband 
leaving  home  for  work  in  the  morning  might  never  return, 
or,  returning,  find  destruction  awaiting  him.  The  gun  fired 


VICTOKIOUS  273 

with  disquieting  irregularity,  and  presently  there  were  long 
lines  of  prospective  travelers  before  the  booking-offices  of  the 
railway-stations :  Evans  declared  that  eight  hundred  thousand 
persons  had  left  the  city. 

The  air  was  electric.  The  communiques  were  twenty-four 
hours  late:  what  was  happening  out  there  in  the  world  be 
yond? 

Drivers  of  camions  that  passed  through  the  suburbs,  and 
engineers  of  trains  that  transported  troops,  told  their  friends 
of  things  they  had  seen  with  their  own  eyes  and  of  rumors 
they  heard,  and  always  believed,  from  those  of  the  military 
with  whom  they  came  in  contact :  the  stories  passed  from  lip 
to  lip  like  prairie-fire.  Andy,  listlessly  visiting  the  govern 
ment  buildings,  saw  messengers  come  and  go  at  all  hours, 
dashing  up  in  motor-cars  that  had  darted  through  the  streets 
at  breakneck  speed;  telephone-receivers  were  never  on  their 
hooks;  telegraph-instruments  clicked  incessantly;  day  and 
night,  many  of  the  officials  remained  in  their  offices. 

Often  he  would  sit  long  in  his  darkened  rooms,  looking 
out  upon  the  shadowy  gardens  where  the  fountain  played. 
He  would  hear  other  lodgers  return  home,  climb  the  com 
plaining  stairs,  shut  their  heavy  doors.  He  would  hear  the 
night-rounds  of  the  house  and  the  occasional  footsteps  of  some 
belated  wayfarer  passing  along  one  of  the  paved  galeries  be 
low.  But  he  would  not  budge  for  an  air-raid:  dawn  would 
find  him  at  the  window. 

It  was  there  that  he  had  found  her  asleep.  This  room  had 
been  alight  with  her  presence;  she  had  curled  her  delicate 
body  in  this  very  chair.  .  .  . 

("You  fool!"  whispered  the  snake  in  his  heart.  "You 
small-town  fool!") 

His  faith  was  shattered.  He  saw  a  diabolic  world  to  return 
Lazarus  to  which  had  been  a  cruelty.  When  he  thought  at  all 
of  Garcia,  he  thirsted  for  a  Thystan  vengeance. 


There  was  the  moment  when  Andy  definitely  learned  that 
the  German  army  had  broken  through  the  line  at  the  point 


274:  VICTORIOUS 

of  juncture  between  the  English  and  the  French;  the  five 
days  when  Gough's  British  Fifth  Army  fell  back  and  back 
until  disaster  seemed  inevitable;  the  hour  when,  from  the 
highest  quarters,  the  word  was  whispered  that  the  road  to 
Paris  lay  open.  Andy  was  walking  homeward  on  that  evening 
with  the  knowledge  that  the  French  reserves  would  not  be 
concentrated  for  action  before  Sunday  and  that  the  outnum 
bered  British  might  not  be  able  to  hold  longer  than  Saturday 
night. 

The  Germans  were  at  the  gate. 

Where  was  the  "fighting  army"  promised  by  America? 

Where  was  Jeanne  d'Arc? 


VI 


To  the  French,  an  American  had  to  present  himself  in 
apologetic  mood,  had  to  try  always  to  explain  the  obviously 
inexcusable.  The  ordinary  Parisian  did  not  make  distinction 
among  the  newer  uniforms,  mistook  Eed  Cross  and  Y.  M-.-C.  A. 
workers  in  Paris  for  United  States  soldiers  enjoying  them 
selves  at  the  capital  while  Frenchmen  died  in  the  trenches. 
The  discontented  shook  their  fists  and  expressed  ugly  opin 
ions  of  all  persons  "too  proud  to  fight."  Dark  streets  were  not 
always  safe  for  Americans. 

There  have  been  few  days  of  such  suspense.  Even  the  un 
informed  came  to  know  that  something  impended.  The 
boulevard  crowds  were  smaller  than  usual,  and  more  restless. 
People  gathered  in  little  knots  and  spoke  in  undertones.  Like 
every  other  accessible  citizen  of  his  country,  Andy  was  again 
and  again  appealed  to: 

"Will  not  they  let  your  army  fight  at  last?  Surely,  they 
will  let  it  fight  now !" 

VII 

Evans  at  last  peremptorily  bundled  Andy  away.  The  great 
good-natured  man  saw  that  something  was  eating  out  the 
lad's  heart  and  decided  for  a  change  of  moral  atmosphere. 


VICTORIOUS  275 

"Go  down  to  Brest  and  see  our  navy,"  tie  commanded. 
"They  know  how  to  do  things  right." 

He  got  Andy  a  pass  through  the  naval  attache  at  the  Em 
bassy  and  shipped  his  patient  across  France,  and  Andy,  for 
a  time,  plucked  up  some  heart  when  he  observed  the  splendid 
liaison  maintained  at  the  old  port  and  saw  something  of  the 
efficient  patrol  and  convoy  system  operating  from  there. 

Yet  even  here  he  found,  soon,  traces  of  the  fatal  blight. 
Sitting  in  the  cafe  of  the  Hotel  Continental,  a  naval  officer 
told  him: 

"This  is  a  perfect  harbor;  it's  the  only  natural  harbor  on 
the  Atlantic  coast  of  Europe,  and  it  is  splendidly  defended. 
Now  that  we're  beginning  to  use  it,  the  transports  can  make 
their  round-trips  often  in  less  than  three  weeks,  whereas  they 
used  to  take  a  hundred  days.  The  only  trouble's  the  poor  rail 
road  facilities." 

Andy  remembered  the  enormous  railway-yards  that  he  had 
seen  building  at  Bordeaux.  He  spoke  of  them. 

"That's  just  it,"  said  the  officer.  "The  army  staff  saw  the 
makings  of  a  good  railroad  center  at  Bordeaux  and  picked 
it  for  our  chief  port  without  thinking  that  when  you  come 
to  choose  a  port  it  might  be  a  good  thing  to  consult  somebody 
that  knows  something  about  water.  Bordeaux's  a  hundred 
miles  farther  east  than  Brest ;  it's  up  a  river  that  anybody  can 
mine,  it's  across  a  sandbar  that  nobody  can  dredge,  and  it's 
got  a  tide  that  runs  six  or  seven  miles  an  hour.  One  of  our 
transports  got  up  there  on  the  highest  tide  of  the  month  and 
then  had  to  wait  for  the  next  month's  highest  tide  before  it 
could  get  down." 

A  desperate  official  proved  to  Andy  the  army  staff's  rail 
way  failure  at  Brest.  He  took  his  guest  over  three  miles 
of  docks  that  resembled  a  house  into  which  a  vast  family  had 
but  just  moved.  From  one  end  of  the  place  to  the  other  ran 
almost  uninterrupted  ramparts,  fifteen  and  twenty  feet  high, 
piled  with  material  that  the  navy  had  delivered,  but  that  the 
army's  transportation  chiefs  could  not  remove.  Mail-bags, 
motor-cars  and  wagon-parts  lay  there,  and  had,  some  of  them, 
lain  there  for  months.  Food  rotted  before  one's  eyes.  Here 


276  VICTORIOUS 

was  a  group  of  expensive  tractors  pronounced  impractical  in 
France ;  there  was  a  half-shipload  of  useless  coffins,  sent  over 
empty,  when  there  was  so  much  need  of  space;  a  half -cargo 
of  clothespins  was  heaped  beside  them.  Worthless  and  valu 
able,  the  entire  conglomeration  was  tossed  together,  still  a 
day's  journey  from  its  destination,  and  fated,  it  seemed,  never 
to  move  again. 

"The  other  day,"  said  the  official,  "we  had  a  cargo  come 
in  with  sugar  and  iron-rails.  Some  contractor'd  packed  the 
rails  on  top  of  the  sugar;  they'd  busted  through  and  ruined 
everything  under  them.  The  stevedores  just  had  to  throw  that 
sugar  into  the  harbor — seventy  thousand  pounds.  And  only 
yesterday  there  were  forty  tons  of  beef  on  a  ship  that  hadn't 
remembered  to  install  a  ref rigerating-plant :  we  tossed  the  lot 
overboard." 

An  energetic  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretary  carried  Andy  out  to 
barracks  to  speak  to  soldiers  newly  arrived.  He  stood  on  a 
low  stage  at  the  end  of  a  vast  tunnel-like  hut,  and  the  sec 
retary  had  the  soldiers  sing  for  him. 

"While  you  are  sleeping, 
Your  France  is  weeping: 

Wake  from  your  dreams,  Maid  of  France !" 

They  sang  slowly,  giving  full  weight  to  every  word  and 
conferring  a  true  dignity  on  what  they  sang. 

"Her  heart  is  bleeding: 
Are  you  unheeding? 

Come  with  the  flame  in  your  glance !" 

He  saw  them  as  a  sea  of  faces  upraised  to  his.  The  secre 
tary  had  been  saying  that  Andy  knew  this  war  and  would  tell 
them  of  the  high  battle  in  which  they  were  soon  to  bear  arms. 

"Through  the  gates  of  heaven,  with  your  sword  in  hand, 
.Come,  your  legions  to  command !" 


VICTOKIOUS  277 

A  sea  of  boys'  faces — a  sea  of  the  faces  of  boys  clean,  eager, 
earnest,  idealistic — 

They  swung  into  the  refrain: 

"Joan  of  Arc !  Joan  of  Arc ! 

Do  your  eyes,  from  the  skies,  see  the  foe  ? 

Don't  you  see  the  drooping  Fleur-de-lis  ? 

Can't  you  hear  the  tears  of  Normandy  ? 
Joan  of  Arc !   Joan  of  Arc ! 
Let  your  spirit  lead  us  through ! 

Come,  lead  your  Prance  to  victory: 
Joan  of  Arc,  they  are  calling  you !" 

Andy  ran  away.  He  took  the  evening  train  for  Paris.  What 
he  needed  was  not  a  change  of  moral  atmosphere,  but  a  self- 
vindication. 

VIII 

Quite  a  heap  of  papers  was  piled  on  the  desk  in  his  work 
room  when  he  returned  to  it.  There  was  a  letter  from  his 
mother,  between  whose  always  reserved  lines  he  read  a  grow 
ing  anxiety  lest  all  should  not  be  well  with  him,  and  another 
letter  from  Blunston,  which  would  have  been  cheering  in  any 
other  circumstances,  since  it  replied  in  sturdy  tone  to  Andy's 
memorandum  of  camp-conditions  and  said  that  the  articles 
now  bearing  Andy's  name  were  winning  him  a  newspaper-rep 
utation.  A  note  scribbled  by  the  conscientious  Mme.  Lafon 
said  that  the  accompanying  package  had  been  left  by  an  un 
known  messenger:  the  package  was  addressed  in  typewriting 
and  contained  everything  that  had  been  stolen  from  his  rooms. 

Andy  promptly  enclosed,  without  revision,  the  recovered 
interview  in  a  fresh  envelope  and  addressed  it,  with  a  formal 
apology  for  delay,  to  the  French  official  who,  Sylvia  had  told 
him,  was  to  have  it  verified  and  dispatched.  His  letters  to 
Sylvia  he  burned  in  the  grate. 

He  was  puzzled  about  these  and  the  interview  until  he  had 
read  two  other  letters  that  were  on  his  table  and  had  been  at 
the  bottom  of  the  pile.  They  were  unstamped  and  bore  super 
scriptions  showing  that  they  came  from  the  American  Staff. 


278  VICTOKIOUS 

His  first  glance  at  their  coverings  had  led  him  to  believe  them 
only  a  pair  of  the  many  circulars  of  fresh  instructions  sent 
to  correspondents,  but  when  he  had  read  them,  Andy  said : 

"Of  course  they  sent  the  other  things  back.  They  don't 
need  them  now." 

For  the  letters  contained  Garcia's  revenge.  The  first  one 
ran: 

".  .  .  In  several  American  newspapers  there  has  been  pub 
lished  an  article,  which  it  is  learned  you  wrote,  though  you  did 
not  sign  it  with  your  own  name,  criticizing  the  Press-Division, 
calling  it  'the  big  joke'  and  'one  of  the  horrors  of  war'  and 
which  was  not  previously  submitted  by  you  for  censorship  in 
accordance  with  the  term  of  the  agreement.  .  .  . 

".  .  .  You  have  been  suspended  from  privileges  as  a  visit 
ing  correspondent  with  the  American  Forces  in  France.  You 
are  also  hereby  notified  that  a  cable  has  been  sent  to  the  Sec 
retary  of  War  recommending  that  your  bond  as  an  accredited 
correspondent  be  forfeited  regardless  of  the  fact  that  you  sur 
rendered  your  credentials  at  a  date  now  sometime  past.  .  .  /' 

Andy  folded  this  letter  carefully  and  put  it  back  on  the  desk. 
His  hand  shook  a  little  as  he  did  so,  and  the  tremor  increased 
as  he  read  the  second  communication : 

".  .  .  On  January  31st,  a  memorandum,  signed  by  an 
officer  who  states  he  was  at  the  railroad  station  when  the  inci 
dent  occurred,  was  submitted  to  the  Chief  of  the  Intelligence 
Section,  Line  of  Communications,  the  memorandum  reading 
as  follows: 

"  '1.  A  newspaper  correspondent  by  the  name  of  Brown 
was  passing  through  Chaumont  from  Neufchateau  on  January 
18th.  At  the  station,  while  waiting  for  the  evening-train, 
which  was  several  hours  late,  he  made  imprudent  statements. 
He  charged  England  with  being  beaten  and  ready  to  quit,  he 
spoke  very  discouragingly  of  the  French,  he  criticized  the  U. 
S.  Army,  besides  giving  away  military  information  which  he 
had  obtained  regarding  the  entry  of  the  1st  Division  into  the 
trenches,  and  similar  pieces  of  military  information. 

"'2.    His  first  name  is  Andrew.     He  was  dressed  in  an 


VICTOKIOUS  279 

American  officer's  uniform,  without  officers'  insignia,  but  with 
a  correspondent's  brassard.  He  was  clean-shaven,  red-haired 
and  freckled.' 

".  .  .  No  doubt  your  application  to  visit  the  British  Front 
was  denied  owing  to  the  statements  you  are  alleged  to  have 
made  in  the  memorandum  quoted  above. 

"The  report,  when  received  here,  would  have  resulted  in  an 
investigation  with  a  view  to  recalling  your  credentials  as  an 
accredited  or  visiting  correspondent,  but  coincident  with  its 
receipt  information  was  received  that  you  had  already  violated 
your  signed  agreement  as  an  accredited  correspondent  by  send 
ing  home  for  publication  matter  regarding  our  forces  in 
France  which  had  not  been  submitted  to  our  censorship.  .  .  ." 

The  grossness  of  these  lies — Andy  cynically  remembered 
his  swathings  of  sweaters  and  trench-coat,  which  concealed 
the  brassard  on  his  arm — the  falsity  apparent  on  their  face, 
the  reason  why  theft  had  followed  their  setting  in  action,  or 
why  bribery  had,  still  later,  been  attempted — all  that  mattered 
nothing.  Garcia  had  kept  his  word :  Andy  was  "f ramed." 

Scarcely  able  to  see  the  paper  on  which  he  wrote,  he  sat 
down  to  answer  his  mother's  letter.  It  was  his  day  to  write  to 
her,  and  he  must  not  let  it  pass. 

"Dearest  Mother,"  he  wrote,  "somehow,  your  last  letter 
makes  me  think  you  are  worrying  about  me.  You  mustn't 
worry.  There  is  no  danger  in  this  part  of  the  city  from  the 
long-range  gun  that  you've  of  course  read  about,  and  our  cel 
lars  are  air-raid-proof.  Things  are  extremely  interesting,  and 
I  am  safe  and  well  and  happy.  .  .  " 


CHAPTER  XXI 

RECORDING  TWO   HIGHLY   EMOTIONAL  EXPERIENCES 

WHATEVER  might  be  said  of  Andy  and  his  mother,  Minnie 
Taylor's  folks  were  not  the  sort  of  folks  to  write  letters  for 
no  better  reason  than  that  none  had  been  written  for  some 
time,  and  because  of  this  highly  practical  attitude,  Chrissly 
did  not  see  his  Ghismonda  nearly  so  soon  as  he  hoped.  Minnie 
was  visiting  a  cousin  in  Sunbury.  She  had  stayed  longer  than 
she  had  planned  to  stay  and,  knowing  nothing  of  Chrissly's 
return,  enjoyed  herself  until  the  end  of  her  visit.  By  the  day 
when  she  came  back  to  Americus,  Chrissly's  visit  was  also 
nearing  its  end,  and  he  was  soon  to  start  on  his  Liberty  Bond 
tour,  from  which,  without  again  reaching  home,  he  would  set 
out  for  France. 

Minnie's  mother  mentioned  his  presence  when  she  walked 
up  from  the  station  with  her  daughter ;  her  daughter  immedi 
ately  flew  into  a  rage  with  her  for  another  cause.  It  being 
evident  that  Chrissly  was  a  town-hero,  Minnie,  the  next  morn 
ing,  sauntered  marketward.  Although  the  family  basket 
swayed  from  one  plump  arm,  she  wore  her  newest  and  shiniest 
short-skirt  frock;  her  blonde  hair  was  fastened  by  large  pins 
that  a  Sunbury  admirer,  who  gave  them  to  her,  had  assured 
her  were  real  tortoise-shell,  and  her  pink  cheeks  had  never 
been  pinker,  her  china-blue  eyes  so  blue.  Chrissly  was  in 
uniform,  but  he  stood  behind  the  food-laden  stall,  helping 
his  parents,  almost  as  if  he  had  never  left  off  helping  them. 
Minnie  wormed  her  way  through  the  crowd  and  then,  as  she 
caught  his  glance,  started :  she  would  have  said  that  she  reg 
istered  amazement. 

"Why,  Chrissly!" — He  was  afraid  she  was  going  to  break 
down. — "Were  you  wounded?  How  on  earth  did  you  get 
here  ?  When  did  you  come  back  ?" 

He  blushed  and,  a  sidelong  glance  telling  him  that  his  par- 

280 


VICTOKIOUS  281 

ents  were  busy  trading,  stammered  his  explanations.  He  was 
so  much  his  old  self  that  she  momentarily  lacked  interest,  but 
she  regained  it  when  she  saw  how  other  people  were  regarding 
her  and  how  proudly  they  regarded  him.  Then,  as  he  stum 
bled  on,  she  noted  two  new  things  about  him — new  and  some- 
;what  uncomfortable:  he  carried  himself  with  a  straightness 
jthat  repudiated  early  memories  of  the  plow,  with  movements 
.that  had  none  of  the  remembered  uncertainties  of  other  days, 
and  his  gaze  on  her  face — this  was  the  other  thing,  a  thing, 
she  felt,  only  fortuitously  accompanying  the  former — was  in 
tent,  questioning,  a  little  puzzled. 

She  asked  about  his  wounds,  and  when  she  found  that  they 
were  quite  cured,  she  reached  across  the  stall  and  twisted  one 
,of  the  bronze  buttons  of  his  blouse. 

1  "Can't  you" — she  lowered  her  modest  eyes  to  the  pile  of 
sausages  that  lay  between  them — "can't  you  get  a  while  to  see 
your  old  friends,  Chrissly?" 

Chrissly  burned  with  delight,  but  his  gaze  still  questioned 
her.  "I  want  to,  lots." 

"After  market  ?"    She  gave  him  her  smile. 

"A'  right.  Pap's  got  some  sings  to  buy :  I'll  have  'most  an 
hour." 

"You  come  up  to  our  house." 

He  had  never  before  been  invited  there.  He  should  have 
been  overwhelmed,  but  he  seemed  only  the  more  puzzled. 

"Sanks,"  he  said. 

Minnie  recovered  her  poise.  "I'll  be  pleased  to  see  you," 
said  she.  "And  I'd  like  three  pounds  of  this  smoked  sausage, 
please." 

n 

1  One  did  not  pass  through  the  chilling  formality  of  a  hall 
way  to  attain  the  Taylors'  parlor,  for  the  street-door  opened 
directly  into  that  apartment;  but  any  want  of  rigidity  in  the 
matter  of  approach  had  its  compensation  in  the  glory  of  ar 
rival.  The  Taylor  parlor  was  a  place  for  a  great  many  things, 
and  they  all  had  the  air  at  once  of  being  new  to  it  and  of  mean 
ing  never  to  be  used  or  moved  a  hairbreadth  from  their  re- 


282  VICTORIOUS 

spective  positions.  There  was  a  green  and  yellow  rug  on  the 
floor  as  fresh  as  when  it  had  hung  in  the  show-window  of  a 
Doncaster  instalment-house;  there  was  much  yellow  wood 
work  and  a  brass  chandelier  apparently  polished  to  an  alarm 
ing  degree  of  thinness.  The  ornate  mantelpiece  was  covered 
by  a  crimson  lambrequin  that  moved  only  composedly  in  the 
draughts  of  hot  air  from  the  open  heater  below  it  and  that 
bore  so  many  vases  and  plaques  that  it  looked  like  the  china- 
counter  in  the  Racket  Store.  There  were  also  some  blue-plush 
chairs,  and  there  was  an  orange-covered  sofa  on  which  Minnie 
dimplingly  bade  her  soldier  sit  beside  her. 

"Now/'  she  said,  after  explaining  how  it  was  that  she  had 
not  seen  him  days  ago,  "we'll  have  a  regular  old-fashioned 
talk."  She  had  received  him  at  the  door  with  a  stiff-armed 
handshake  that  would  have  stopped  a  closer  greeting  on  his 
part,  had  the  perplexed  young  man  contemplated  any;  but 
ensconced  on  the  sofa  she  assumed  a  kinder  tone.  "I'm  just 
dying  to  hear  all  about  the  war." 

"Aw,  no,"  said  Chrissly,  smiling  down  at  her:  she  was  a 
very  pretty  girl. 

"Yes,  I  am.  And  you  needn't  be  afraid  of  any  one  butting 
in,  because  my  mother's  gone  to  Doncaster  in  the  Froenfields' 
automobile."  Mrs.  Taylor  had  been  banished  to  the  kitchen 
fifteen  minutes  before,  but  the  motor-trip  was  planned  for 
that  afternoon,  and  Minnie  did  not  see  why  a  matter  of  three 
or  four  hours  should  rob  her  of  the  expedition's  glamour.  "I'm 
crazy  to  hear  about  the  war."  She  fingered  that  blouse-but 
ton  again. 

"If  you  pull  them-there  off,"  Chrissly  cautioned  her,  "I'll 
get  a  call-down  next  inspection  still."  He  drew  an  inch  away. 

"How  many  Germans  did  you  kill  ?"  asked  Minnie. 

Chrissly,  who  felt  excessively  out  of  place  on  the  stiff  uphol 
stered  sofa,  needed  but  this  question  to  bring  his  embarrass 
ment  to  the  limit  of  endurance. 

"Aw,"  he  said,  rubbing  his  red  hands  together,  "don't  let's 
talk  about  that  none."  What  was  lacking?  What  was  it  that 
he  had  forgotten  ?  The  ache  in  his  head  had  never  left  him ; 
now  it  was  acute. 


VICTORIOUS  283 

"We've  had  all  sorts  of  times  back  here/'  she  said :  "we've 
had  a  whole  lot  of  Eed  Cross  dances,  and — oh,  we  had  a  sort 
of  regular  epidemic  of  typhoid." 

The  statements  about  Americus  evinced  much  more  interest 
than  her  question  about  France.  With  some  relief,  but  not 
entirely  with  relief,  he  realized  that  her  preliminary  urgings 
were  mere  politeness,  that  here  was  only  another  person  pos 
sessed  by  a  deeper  interest  in  domestic  affairs  than  in  affairs 
foreign ;  Minnie  did  not  really  want  to  hear  about  the  war  at 
all ;  she  did  not  want  to  hear  about  anything :  she  wanted  to 
talk. 

She  did  talk.  She  talked  with  dancing  dimples  that  gave 
place  to  smiles  sunny  and  not  infrequently  interrupted  by  the 
silver  notes  of  teeth-displaying  laughter.  She  told  of  the  ty 
phoid  epidemic,  and  particularly  of  her  part  in  it:  how  she 
had  been  one  of  a  corps  of  volunteer  nurses,  who  went  about 
— "and  in  real  uniforms" — to  do  nursing  among  the  poor  of 
Americus.  Minnie  said  how  she  thought  she  had  bathed  fifty 
people,  men,  women  and  children,  washed  dishes  and  scrubbed 
floors. 

"I  never  thought  any  places  could  be  so  dirty,"  Minnie  de 
clared. 

Chrissly  said  nothing.  He  merely  kept  a  questioning  at 
tention  that  was  for  her  face  rather  than  her  words. 

"Some  of  the  regular  nurses  thought  they  knew  it  all,  and 
some  of  the  doctors  were  horrid — pretended  they  were  smarter 
than  the  Eed  Cross  nursing-book.  They're  awfully  old-fash 
ioned — the  doctors  in  this  town,  I  mean.  The  book  said  to 
bathe  them  and  keep  the  windows  open — bathe  the  sick  peo 
ple,  of  course  —  and  Doctor  Patrick  scolded  us  because  we 
did  it!" 

She  was  pretty.  He  admitted  as  much,  but  he  admitted  it 
with  the  generous  ease  of  a  man  whose  affections  were  engaged 
elsewhere.  What  was  it  that  he  had  forgotten?  He  thought 
he  would  go  mad  if  he  did  not  remember. 

One  thing  he  realized  clearly:  past  months  had  separated 
him  from  Minnie  by  countless  miles.  To  this  girl  in  her 
guarded  little  town,  the  war  was  a  good  deal  like  what  an 


284  VICTORIOUS 

earthquake  might  be  in  Honduras,  where  one  or  two  persons 
she  had  known  happened  to  be.  She  had  not  had  the  chance 
to  go  over  there  as  had  gone  to  hard  and  dangerous  work 
some  of  the  devoted  women  that  he  saw  in  France,  and  so 
the  great  struggle  was  less  of  a  present  world-horror  than 
a  local  annoyance  for  her,  here  and  there  upsetting  the  nor 
mally  merry  progress  of  her  life.  Why,  she  talked  as  if  she 
thought  that  her  amateur  nursing  was  war-work ! 

No,  Minnie  was  not  that  which  he  had  lost,  though,  when 
he  was  in  the  hospital  in  France,  it  was  of  her  he  had  thought 
so  much.  But  since  not  Minnie — what? 

She  was  clicking  on.  If  she  wanted  to  impress  him,  she 
wanted  just  as  sincerely  to  entertain  him,  and  she  never 
doubted  that  hers  was  the  certain  way.  Now  her  subject  was 
a  new  "social  club"  that  some  of  the  boys,  home  on  leave  from 
the  cantonments,  were  planning  to  establish  after  the  war.  It 
would  be  a  real  club  with  a  whole  house  of  its  own,  and  very 
select.  She  thought  they  might  get  the  Tidd  house  when  the 
Eed  Cross  was  through  with  it,  and  she  told  him  her  idea  of 
how  it  could  be  remodeled.  On  a  rainy  afternoon  when  no 
body  else  would  be  there,  Mrs.  Ralph  had  motored  her  to  the 
Doncaster  country-club ;  since  which  memorable  visit,  Minnie 
was  her  friends'  authority  on  such  matters. 

She  thought  she  would  ask  Mrs.  Ralph  what  the  Tidd  house 
would  rent  for.  She  would  put  the  question  after  next  Fri 
day's  meeting  of  the  pneumonia- jacket  class.  Then  she  would 
tell  Chrissly  the  answer  at  Saturday's  market. 

It  was  only  through  this  chance  chatter  that  she  learned  the 
date  of  his  departure : 

"I  won't  be  here  still,  the  back-end  of  the  week,"  said 
Chrissly. 

Minnie  stopped  short.  "Why — when — when  are  you  going 
away?" 

"Day  after  to-morrow."  Chrissly  said  it  as  if  he  were  talk 
ing  of  a  trip  to  Doncaster. 

"Not  to  France?" 

"I  go  'round  an'  'round  the  country  like,  to  these  here  Lib- 


VICTORIOUS  285 

erty  Bond  meetings.  But  I  don't  git  back  here  no  more  'fore 
I  sail." 

Minnie  paled  a.  little,  and  her  pout  arose  from  genuine  feel 
ing.  "I  thought  of  course  you'd  stay  a  while." 

"I  have  stayed,  Minnie.  I  can't  stick  around  here  doin' 
nussing  all  the  time." 

"I  hate  the  old  war !"  Minnie's  dimpled  fist  pounded  the 
orange-colored  sofa  without  making  any  visible  impression 
on  it.  "It's  bad  enough  the  way  it  crowds  out  everything  in 
the  papers  and  puts  in  big  head-lines  about  places  nobody  ever 
heard  of  or  cares  about.  And  now — and  now  you've  got  to  go 
back  to  it — I  don't  see  why:  you've  done  your  share;  why, 
you've  been  wounded:  that's  enough  for  one  person  to  do. — 
Chrissly  Shuman,  I  believe  you'll  be  glad  to  be  going!" 

Some  other  woman  had  once  talked  to  him  before  he  went 
back  to  war ;  but  not  thus.  Some  other  woman :  what  had  she 
said  and  who  was  she  ? — • 

A  sudden  something  swept  over  him — a  sense  that  utterly 
reversed  every  emotion  experienced  since  his  return.  He  stood 
up.  He  could  not  comprehend  why,  but  he  knew  that  he  ut 
tered  a  master  truth  when  he  heard  himself  replying  to  her 
pout: 

"You  shust  let  I'll  be  glad  to  go !" 

Glad  indeed !  This  was  not  at  all  what  she  had  expected : 
it  was  senseless.  The  idea  of  a  man  pretending  happiness  at 
a  return  to  certain  discomfort  and  possible  death !  She  could 
only  gape  at  him  from  the  orange-colored  sofa. 

"T  I  stayed  here  much  longer,"  vowed  Chrissly,  staring 
wildly  at  her,  "I'd  git  right  drank  an'  then  srow  myself  in  the 
Susquehanny !" 

She  saw  it  now  as  a  reflection  on  her  wiles :  he  was  telling 
her  that  she  made  him  tired !  Flaming,  she  sprang  to  her  feet. 
She  thrust  her  angry  face  close  to  his.  There  shot  before  her 
memory  the  recollection  of  his  awkward  advances  in  the  old 
days  and  of  her  scorn  of  them,  nor  did  she  fail  to  see  in  a  new 
light  the  advances  that  she  had  just  been  making  and  that  he 
had  repulsed.  These  rough  soldiers  thought  they  were  bet- 


286  "VICTORIOUS 

ter  than  anybody  else.  What  had  Chrissly  Shuman  been,  any 
way? 

"You're  a  horrid  pig!"  she  cried;  "I'd  like  to  slap  your 
face!"  She  had  often  before  struck  impertinent  youth,,  but 
now  it  was  as  much  to  her  own  amazement  as  to  his  that  she 
swung  her  open  palm  across  his  intent  eyes.  "You're  a  hor 
rid  pig  I"  she  repeated. 

Chrissly  was  blinded,  but,  with  the  word  and  the  blow,  more 
had  come  to  him  to  remain  than  any  sense  that  was  tempo 
rarily  taken  away.  He  reeled  backward,  he  clapped  his  hands 
to  his  face,  but  through  his  hands  he  shouted : 

"Cochon!  That's  it:  that's  what  fer  she  said  when  I  hit 
him ;  that's  what  I  said  first  time  in  the  trenches.  I  got  it  now. 
Why — why — "  His  hands  came  down.  He  looked  again  at 
Minnie,  and  then  he  looked,  terribly,  fixedly,  beyond  her, 
across  the  sofa,  as  if  he  would  pierce  the  wall :  "Leonie !'  he 
cried.  "C'est  toi!  C'est  toil  Ah,  ma  petite!  Tu  vas  lien? 
Tu  es  la,  tou jours,  dans  I'auberge?  Tu  ne  m'a  pas  oublie — tu 
ne  m'a  pas  oublie?" 

Minnie  did  not  understand  a  word,  but  she  understood  that 
she  had  somehow  lost  him.  She  cried  out  to  him  in  her  in 
jured  pride,  but  what  she  saw  before  her  was  a  man  she  did 
not  know. 

Chrissly  jammed  his  trench-cap  on  his  head  and  dashed 
from  the  house  as  if  the  French  inn  that  he  was  thinking  of 
stood  just  across  the  street. 

m 

Nevertheless,  when,  two  days  later,  he  left  the  farm  for 
Americus,  whence  he  was  to  take  the  train  for  Doncaster,  he 
went  away  in  not  quite  the  same  mood.  It  was  one  thing  to 
turn  from  a  Minnie  proved  worthless  to  a  suddenly  remem 
bered  and  realizedly  ill-used  Leonie;  it  was  another  to  say 
good-by  for  a  second  time  to  his  father  and  mother.  The  first 
time  had  been  hard  enough;  now  he  knew  to  what  it  was  he 
;was  going.  .  .  . 

Tears  blotted  out  the  house,  and  the  two  homely  figures  at 


VICTORIOUS  287 

tke  gate,  before  his  wagon  reached  that  turn  of  the  road  which 
would  itself  have  drawn  a  curtain.  He  loved  the  place  and 
the  people  in  it,  and  he  wanted  to  carry  the  clear  picture  of 
it  and  them  out  there  to  the  land  of  mud  and  filth,  of  misery 
and  death,  to  which  he  was  returning. 

IV 

Blunston  was  crossing  Second  Street  as  Ghrissly's  wagon 
rattled  down  Elm  Avenue.  The  elder  man  knew  Chrissly  now, 
as  all  the  town  did,  and  stopped  in  the  middle  of  the  way. 

You're  Mr.  Shuman,  aren't  you  ?"  Blunston  held  a  yellow 
piece  of  paper  in  his  hand. 

Chrissly  nodded. 

"You  saw  Andy — Andy  Brown  in  .  .  .  ?"  A  gesture  to 
ward  the  eastern  horizon  completed  the  question. 

"Yes,  sir.    He  give  me  some  Spys" 

"There's  a  chance  that  you  can  do  something  for  me  ... 
for  him." 

"I'll  do  anysing  I  can,  sir." 

"The  fact  is,"  said  Blunston,  "I've  just  received  some  rather 
disquieting  news." 

v 

In  Paris,  twenty-four  hours  previously,  Andy  had  been 
among  the  ruins  of  his  hopes  and  set  about  a  Spartan  recon 
struction.  He  was  acting  on  the  hard  theory  that  asserts  the 
possible  victory  of  ideals  pitted  against  realities. 

Relentlessly,  he  remembered  the  wounded  rabbit  that  he 
had  once  been  too  nerveless  to  kill.  He  remembered  the  bloody 
face  of  the  soldier  that  died  in  his  arms  in  the  shelled  head^ 
quarters-town  beyond  Toul.  He  grimly  reviewed  the  corrup 
tions,  the  abominations  and  inevitable  indecencies  of  the 
trenches,  the  horrible  pandemonium  of  battle  and  the  sight 
and  smell  of  slaughter  and  decay,  and  the  imagination  that 
had  helped  him  to  write  truly  made  him  feel  too  clearly.  He 
reached,  nevertheless,  a  decision ;  he  went  to  see  a  doctor,  and 
came  out  with  his  red  head  high :  the  girl  he  had  mistaken  for 


288  VICTORIOUS 

the  goddess  was  only  a  woman  of  the  theater,  but  that  did  not 
prove  the  goddess  inexistent;  the  Hun  was  at  the  gates,  but 
he  had  not  yet  entered  them;  the  direction  of  his  country's 
effort  was  either  stiff-necked  and  blind,  or  else  criminally  in 
competent  and  itself  profiteering  for  power,  but  the  spirit  of 
the  men  was  the  old  spirit  of  America,  and  even  yet  that 
spirit  would  win,  even  yet,  because  of  it,  democracy,  both  at 
home  and  abroad,  would  somehow  triumph  over  autocracy. 
Though  through  lips  of  clay,  divinity  had  spoken : 

"The  cause  is  bigger  than  its  mistakes/' 

He  went  to  an  insurance-office  in  the  Boulevard  Haussmann 
and  transacted  some  lengthy  business.  He  went  to  another 
office.  From  the  latter  he  sought  the  rue  Auber  and  dis 
patched  a  cable-message  to  Blunston. 

Twilight  was  falling  as  he  crossed  the  Place  de  1' Opera.  A 
group  of  American  Red  Cross  workers  passed  him,  dressed  as 
if  hurrying  on  some  assignment  to  the  front.  They  were 
singing,  and  he  caught  the  words : 

"And  we  won't 
Come  back 
Till  it's  over 
Over  There !" 

He  was  looking  across  his  shoulder  at  them  and  not,  as  he 
should  have  done  in  so  perilous  a  place,  in  the  direction  in 
which  he  was  going.  He  walked  into  the  short  arms  of  the 
comfortably  swathed  McGregor. 

"Hello !"  cried  the  contractor.  "Here  you  are  at  last !  Now 
you've  got  to  talk  to  me."  He  peered  at  Andy.  "You  look 
solemn." 

"I'm  not  down-hearted,"  Andy  qualified. 

"Well,  you  know  what  the  doctor  said  when  they  called  him 
in  to  look  at  the  man  that  fell  off  the  Woolworth  Building: 
'Twenty-five  wounds;  the  first  fifteen  are  fatal,  but  the  last 
ten  are  luckily  not  dangerous.'  Come  on  and  have  dinner  at 
a  new  place  I  know.  Good  food.  It's  too  cloudy  for  an  air 
raid,  and  the  gun  stopped  at  four-thirty — I  never  go  out  till 
the  municipal  authorities  phone  me  it  does.  Besides,  we've 


VICTORIOUS  289 

something  to  celebrate  to-night.  Come  on;"  he  winked  per 
suasively  :  "I've  got  something  to  tell  you,  and  you  look  as  if 
you  had  something  to  tell  me." 

"I  don't  think  I  ought  to,"  said  Andy.  He  could  not  help 
liking  the  rascal. 

"Not  another  party  in  your  rooms  ?"  McGregor  poked  him 
in  the  ribs  and  then  drew  hastily  away  from  Andy's  quickly 
warning  glance.  "Oh,  I  knew  it  was  all  right  and  all  that, 
but  I  did  hear  about  it,  and  really  it  was  indiscreet.  Look 
here" — he  grew  quite  grave — "what  I  want  to  see  you  about 
is  Miss  Raeburn,  for  one  thing — " 

"I  don't  want  to  hear  about  her,"  said  Andy,  "and  you 
oughtn't  to  want  to  tell.  Please  don't  do  it." 

"And  the  other  thing's  Garcia,"  McGregor  insisted. 

"He  can't  do  anything  more  to  me,"  said  Andy. 

"He  can't,  can't  he  ?  That's  all  you  know  about  it,  my  son. 
Come  on  anyhow  and  eat.  I  tell  you  we've  got  to  celebrate." 

Andy  had  been  full  of  his  own  concerns :  "Celebrate  what  ?" 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  you  haven't  heard?"  McGregor 
poured  out  the  glad  news : 

The  miracle  had  happened.  The  French  performed  the  first 
part  of  it:  tired  and  harassed  as  they  were,  the  war-weary 
army  of  that  people  whom  all  the  rest  of  the  world  used  to  re 
gard  as  merely  mercurial  said  to  itself:  "We  have  to  do  our 
work  all  over  again" — and  began  doing  it  forthwith;  the  re 
serves  that  "couldn't  get  up  until  Sunday"  got  there  on  Sat 
urday  ;  they  stopped  the  first  advance  of  the  German  offensive. 
The  second  portion  was  performed  by  the  British :  their  Fifth 
Army  was  rallied,  and  the  other  parts  of  their  line  held  fast. 
The  third  phase  fell  to  the  lot  of  America :  knowing  the  seri 
ousness  of  the  situation,  the  English  premier  sent  for  the 
American  secretary  of  war,  who  was  then  in  London;  the 
American  secretary  of  war  hurried  to  Paris,  where  he  was 
seen  by  the  French  premier;  next  the  American  secretary  of 
war  sent  for  the  American  commander-in-chief,  and,  finally, 
the  American  commander-in-chief  completed  the  unity  of 
command  under  Foch  by  offering  that  officer,  on  the  part  of 
America,  "all  we  have  and  all  we  are." 


290  VICTORIOUS 

To  hear  McGregor  tell  it,  a  stranger  would  have  thought 
that  the  contractor  had  all  along  advocated  such  a  cause : 

"So  you  see,  I  was  right  when  I  kept  saying  it  would  all 
come  out  for  the  best  in  the  end.  Somebody  had  to  put  the 
screws  on,  but  he  did  it  in  plenty  of  time.  Now  come  on,  and 
we'll  eat." 

Andy  had  heard  him  in  silence.    Now  he  said : 

"I  can't  do  that,  but  I'm  much  obliged  for  the  news.  It 
wouldn't  have  made  any  difference  in  what  I  was  going  to  do, 
even  if  I'd  known  it,  but  it's  fine  news  and  I'm  glad  it's  hap 
pened." 

McGregor  blew  out  his  always  puffy  cheeks.  "What  you 
were  going  to  do?  D'you  have  another  exposure  on  hand? 
What  was  it?" 

"No,"  said  Andy,  slowly  smiling,  "no  exposure.  I'm 
through  with  them.  I'll  tell  you  what  it  was.  .  .  ." 

VI 

The  cable-message  that  Andy  had  sent  from  the  office  in  the 
rue  Auber,  the  message  that  Blunston  held  in  his  hand  when 
he  stopped  Chrissly  Shuman  on  Elm  Avenue,  read  thus : 

"Bond  declared  forfeit  have  insured  life  to  protect  make  it 
easy  but  tell  mother  have  enlisted." 


CHAPTER  XXII 

CONTAINING  SOME  ADVENTURES  OF  A  PUPIL  IN  THE  SCHOOL  OF 
WAR,  AND  SHOWING  HOW  LE*ONIE  DID  NOT  WAIT  IN  VAIN, 
AND  HOW  ANDY  FOUND  HIS  SOUL 

WHEN  he  could  have  had  a  commission ! 

And  at  such  a  time  as  this! 

McGregor  had  offered,  argued,  pleaded  in  vain.  Whereto 
Andy,  in  a  stubborn  modesty,  made  brief  answers  to  the  effect 
that  such  a  commission  as  the  contractor  could  get  for  him 
would,  since  he  was  a  novice  at  military  matters,  hold  him 
somewhere  behind  the  lines,  when  what  he  wanted  was  to  fight. 
As  for  the  time — well,  examining  physicians  proved  to  be  not 
so  exacting  as  formerly,  and  this  was  precisely  the  time  when 
every  fellow  was  needed.  Finally,  he  broke  away  from  Mc 
Gregor's  grasp  of  his  lapel  and  almost  ran  up  the  Avenue 
de  l'0pe"ra. 

McGregor  looked  after  him,  chewing  a  cigar.  Then  he 
said: 

"It's  a  woman.    It's  that  pretty  actress !" 

He  was  genuinely  worried.  War  was  a  splendid  thing — for 
people  one  was  not  too  fond  of — jet  it  was  not,  in  McGregor's 
view,  a  thing  for  Andy.  Toward  him  the  Chicagoan's  attitude 
had  never  been  feigned.  He  felt  at  their  first  meeting,  one  of 
those  sudden  likings  for  the  lad  to  which  none  is  so  predis 
posed  as  your  cautious  business  man.  Their  subsequent  social 
relationship,  revealing  Andy's  boyish  frankness  and  matter- 
of-fact  manliness,  awoke  affection.  Once  or  twice,  to  be  sure, 
their  purposes  ran  counter  to  each  other,  but  that  was  only 
in  the  field  of  hard  business,  and  even  there  Andy's  able  and 
fair  fighting,  not  to  speak  of  his  plucky  opposition  to  heavy 
odds,  evoked  admiration  though  it  forbade  mercy.  McGregor 

291 


293  VICTORIOUS 

would  have  done  anything  for  his  friend  except  permit  him 
to  expose  the  aircraft  failure. 

And  now,  here  was  this  matter  of  an  actress.  McGregor 
liked  Sylvia,  considering  the  little  he  had  seen  of  her ;  he  had 
even  allowed  himself  to  speculate  upon  the  possibility  of  lik 
ing  her  a  great  deal ;  a  woman's  past  never  annoyed  him,  nor 
her  present,  so  long  as  he  saw  the  chance  of  changing  that; 
but  for  Andy — it  wouldn't  do.  There  was  the  mysterious  re 
cipient  of  her  money!  She  could  not  be  serious  about  this 
young  fellow:  before  a  woman  throws  herself  at  a  man,  she 
finds  out  whether  he  is  a  good  catch,  and  Andy's  lack  of  abil 
ity  in  that  particular  was  patent.  What  was  the  New  Or 
leans  fellow's  name  ?  He'd  made  a  careful  note  of  it.  A  hus 
band,  of  course:  actresses  always  had  censored  husbands  in 
their  background,  unpublishable  persons  that  nevertheless 
were  never  killed,  rarely  in  any  sense  made  place  for  some  one 
more  desirable  before  some  one  less  desirable  secured  irrefuta 
ble  claims  for  their  place.  There  was  no  use  looking  them  up : 
if  you  found  them,  you  always  found  them  out  of  the  ques 
tion.  He  himself  was  hardened,  but  not  so  Andy.  Oh,  it 
wouldn't  do  at  all ! 

That  was  why,  that  very  evening,  Andy  received  a  labored 
letter  from  McGregor,  borne  by  a  Eitz  cliasseur.  It  began 
with  some  tender  reminiscences  of  the  late  Mrs.  McGregor, 
intimated,  rather  broadly,  that  Sylvia  had  better  be  given  up, 
hard  as  such  a  process  might  prove,  and  ended : 

"Take  an  old  fellow's  advice  and  try  it.  Nobody  ever  knows 
what  he  can  do  till  he  tries — that's  why  a  lot  of  people  never 
know  what  they  can  do." 

Andy  burned  the  letter,  worried  about  his  forfeited  bond, 
recollected  that  his  mother  would  hear  of  his  enlistment  from 
Blunston  before  receiving  his  letter  telling  her  that  all  was 
well  and  went  about  packing  his  belongings  for  storage.  He 
wrote  a  note  to  Owen  Evans.  He  did  not  get  to  bed  until 
morning. 

"Men,"  he  said  to  himself  as  he  turned  in,  "are  somehow 
always  worse  than  women.  Even  when  they're  talking  about 


VrCTOKIOUS  293 

a — a  bad  woman,  they  always  show  themselves  worse  than 
she  is." 

He  was  too  tired  to  dream. 

ii 

Meanwhile,  McGregor  had  called  on  Sylvia.  He  considered 
it  his  duty  to  prove  her — a  not  unpleasant  duty,  but  a  duty 
nevertheless — and  that  a  decisive  conclusion  did  not  decide 
him  is  a  fact  which  nobody  familiar  with  McGregor  will  con 
sider  paradoxical.  An  interview  in  a  hotel  parlor  rarely; 
proves  anything,  anyhow. 

She  seemed  glad  to  see  him.  She  even  let  him  sit  beside 
her  as  Andy  had  once,  in  this  same  parlor,  sat.  And  she 
thanked  him  again  for  sending  that  money. 

"No  trouble  at  all,"  said  McGregor.  He  regarded  Tac 
lying  at  her  feet.  "It  got  there  all  right,  did  it?" 

"Quite.    I  had  a  cable." 

"From  Mr.  Rayburn?"  His  eyes  could  be  sudden  when 
they  wanted  to  be :  they  were  sudden  now. 

To  no  purpose,  however:  hers  had  in  them  something  like 
a  smile.  "From  the  person  you  were  good  enough  to  send  the 
money  to,  of  course." 

She  understood  him,  and  she  wanted  him  to  know  that  she 
did.  McGregor  liked  her  the  better  for  that. 

"I  get  you,"  he  chuckled.  "Did  you  ever  hear  about  the 
tramp  that  knocked  at  the  kitchen-door  and  told  the  lady-of- 
the-house  he  didn't  know  where  his  next  meal  was  coming 
from  ?  She  said :  'You've  come  to  the  wrong  place  to  find  out ; 
this  isn't  an  information-bureau.' — Seen  anything  of  young 
Brown  lately?" 

Sylvia  bent  to  pat  Tac,  and  so  her  face  was  hidden.  "Not 
lately." 

"He's  a  nice  boy,"  said  McGregor. 

"Very,"  said  Sylvia. 

"But,"  said  McGregor  slowly,  "he's  only  a  boy." 

To  that  Sylvia  said  nothing. 

"Only  a  boy,"  McGregor  repeated  slowly.  He  produced  his 
wonderful  cigar-case.  "Mind  if  I  smoke?  No?  Thanks." 


294:  VICTORIOUS 

He  lighted  the  chosen  cigar.  "Anybody  could  make  a  fool  of 
him.  Fm  always  afraid  somebody  will." 

She  looked  up  now.    Her  face  was  quite  composed. 

"I  wouldn't  be,"  she  said.  Her  eyes  maintained  their 
depths,  but  her  smile  was  perfectly  worldly-wise.  "There 
isn't  the  slightest  danger,  Mr.  McGregor." 

"You're  sure  ?" 

He  studied  her  carefully,  but  decided  her  assurance  au 
thentic. 

She  answered :  "Quite." 

McGregor  sighed  relief.  He  chuckled.  He  put  out  his 
hand. 

"Shake,"  said  he. 

They  shook  hands,  and  he  held  her  hand. 

"Miss  Raeburn,"  he  said,  "I  wish  I  could  see  more  of  you. 
I'm  a  lonely  man  all  the  time,  and  I'm  mighty  lonely  over 
here." 

He  might  have  said  more,  but  she  withdrew  her  hand  so 
quickly  that  Tac,  disturbed  by  the  movement,  looked  up 
meaningly  at  her  companion. 

"I'm  so  very  busy,"  she  murmured. 

McGregor  rose  with  a  little  bow. 

"That's  for  you  to  say,"  he  told  her.  "The  longer  I  live, 
the  less  I  know  about  ladies.  You  remember  the  five-year-old 
that  brought  her  three-year-old  sister  for  vaccination?  She 
said:  'Doctor,  sis  don't  know  her  left  arm  from  her  right, 
so  maw  washed  ?em  both.'"  He  offered  his  hand.  "It's 
for  friendship  this  time,"  he  explained.  "We  can  be  friends  ?" 

In  friendship  she  met  him.    "Of  course." 

McGregor's  puffy  face  grew  sincerely  grave.  "And  we'll 
try  to  help  the  boy." 

"Andy?" 

"Yes.  He  may  be  needing  friends.  He's  enlisted."    .    .    . 

in 

It  was  a  chilly  night,  but  McGregor,  as,  a  half-hour  later, 
he  wheezed  into  his  waiting  motor,  mopped  sweat  from  his 
cheeks. 


VICTORIOUS  295 

"I  guess  my  work's  not  calculated  to  make  gentlemen,"  he 
murmured  to  himself.  "Anyhow,  I  don't  understand  women 
— not  a  bit  I  don't.  Says  she  don't  care  for  him,  and  yet,  all 
the  time  I  try  to  make  up  to  her,  she's  as  ready  to  fly  away 
as  a  butterfly  on  a  flower.  Says  she  don't  care  for  him,  but 
says  it  with  the  kind  of  smile  the  thoroughbreds  put  on  when 
they're  sacrificing  themselves  for  some  fool  notion  or  other. 
Says  she  don't  care  for  him,  and  then  faints  when  I  tell  her 
he's  enlisted !" 

rv 

Andy,  waking  before  dawn,  had  only  to  dress  and  go  to 
the  Gare  de  FEst,  where  a  sergeant  would  provide  him  with 
transportation  to  the  place  at  which  he  was  to  join  his  unit. 
He  was  glad  that  he  had  done  his  packing,  instead  of  leaving 
that  to  the  kindly  proffered  offices  of  Mme.  Lafon:  it  made 
departure  easier  that  the  rooms  should  be  pretty  well  dis 
mantled.  He  looked  at  the  pile  of  luggage  for  which  the 
storage-men  were  to  call  later  in  the  day  and  wondered  how 
he  had  collected  so  much  when  he  had  brought  so  little;  he 
looked  also  at  the  grate  that  held  the  ashes  of  McGregor's 
letter  and  at  the  curtains  between  which  Sylvia  had  stood. 

He  blew  out  the  candle. 


Then,  in  the  resounding  railway-station,  with  gray-blue 
poilus  rolling  trainward,  incredible  packs  on  their  backs,  a 
mother  on  one  arm  and  a  sweetheart  on  the  other,  Sylvia 
met  him.  His  impulse  was  to  dodge  away  from  her,  but  it 
was  at  once  evident  that  she  was  there  to  seek  him. 

She  was  pale — he  thought  that  perhaps  she  was  over 
worked  ;  he  had  heard  that  she  had  again  been  making  a  tour 
of  the  -foyers — yet  she  smiled  as  she  came  through  the  crowd. 
He  saw  that  immediately. 

"I'm  so  sorry  not  to  have  seen  you  all  these  days,"  she 
said.  "I  tried  to  get  in  touch  with  you  and  couldn't.  Last 
night  Mr.  McGregor  told  me  you'd  enlisted.  He  told  me 


296  VICTOBIOUS 

you'd  be  going  from  here  this  morning.  So  I  came  to  wish 
you  luck/' 

Andy  tried  to  make  reply. 

"I  wanted  you  to  know  I  was  still  your  friend/'  said  Sylvia. 

"Thanks,"  said  Andy.  "I'm — it  was  good  of  you  to  get 
up  here  at  this  time  of  day." — But  she  wasn't  changed  !  His 
heart  hardened.  —  "Those  papers  were  returned,"  he  said. 
"Somebody  sent  them  back.  I  started  the  interview  on  its 
way.  I  hope  it  gets  through  and  has  some  effect.  It  will  be 
my  last  newspaper  job  for  a  long  while." 

They  were  standing  beside  a  closed  ticket-window,  a  little 
withdrawn  from  the  hurrying  hundreds  that  filled  the  station. 
She  started  at  his  words: 

"Somebody?" 

"Yes.    Garcia,  I  guess.    Garcia." 

He  held  her  with  his  eyes  as  he  repeated  the  name.  In  the 
so  familiar  way,  her  brows  puckered.  She  flushed,  caught  her 
breath.  She  bit  her  lip. 

"I  see/'  she  said. 

"He  probably  thought  he  didn't  need  them.  He'd  fixed  me 
another  way." 

"How?"    She  barely  breathed  the  monosyllable. 

"Oh,"  Andy  tried  to  laugh,  and  he  looked  to  one  side : 
"It  doesn't  matter,  does  it?" 

"Because  you've  enlisted?" 

"Yes — because  I've  enlisted."  He  wouldn't  look  at  her 
again. 

"That's  one  of  the  things  I've  come  to  tell  you  about ;  and 
to  wish  you  good-by,"  she  said.  "I  think — I  think  you're  won 
derfully  brave — Andy." 

He  did  laugh  now.  "For  the  love  of  Mike,"  he  said,  "don't 
talk  that  way.  I  found  out  they'd  have  me  at  last,  so  of 
course  I  went." 

"But  you  kept  on  trying." 

"Look  at  all  the  other  fellows.  I  couldn't  have  stayed  out 
and  had  any  self-respect  left.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I'm  scared 
to  death  here  for  fear  I'll  be  scared  to  death" — he  nodded 


VICTOKIOUS  297 

his  red  head  toward  the  train-shed  as  toward  the  battle-line 
— "out  there/' 

"When — "  Again  she  caught  her  hreath.  Had  he  looked 
at  her,  he  would  have  seen  how  wistful  was  her  face.  "When 
do  you  have  to  get  on  your  train?" 

"In  ten  minutes."  He  shifted  his  feet.  "I've  got  to  report 
to  a  sergeant  at  the  gate — " 

"Then  I  mustn't  keep  you." 

He  was  ashamed  of  himself.  After  all,  she  had  never  en 
couraged  him  to  believe  in  her — never,  indeed,  been  anything 
but  friendly.  And  this  coming  to  see  him  off:  that  was  un 
commonly  friendly. 

"Til  be  in  training  for  a  long  time,  I  guess,"  he  said. 

She  shook  her  head.  He  glanced  at  her  once,  very  quickly, 
and  saw  how  her  hair  caught  all  there  was  of  the  early  light, 
but  he  did  not  see  her  eyes.  "Not  long.  Not  now.  They  need 
men  too  badly." 

"And  where'll  you  be?" 

Her  face  was  white  indeed.  "Amusing  my  soldiers."  It 
was  she  who  now  looked  aside. 

Andy  clapped  a  hand  on  her  shoulder.  "Sylvia,  you  hate 
to  see  a  friend  go,  don't  you?" 

Her  head  was  bowed.   "Yes,"  she  said. 

"And  you've  some  sort  of  silly  notion  about  a  fellow  not 
coming  back?" 

She  did  not  answer :  there  was  no  need. 

"Well,  a  fellow  oughtn't  to  count  on  it,"  he  said;  "but 
lots  of  them  do  come  back,  you  know.  I  hope" — yes,  he  knew 
now  that  he  did  hope  it ! — "I  hope  I  come  back,  and  we  can 
be  friends  again." 

Just  friends :  he  meant  that.  He  would  keep  his  ideals,  but 
he  could  at  least  be  friends  with  clay  from  which  the  spirit 
of  those  ideals  had  fled. 

"We  will  be,"  said  Sylvia:  "good  friends."  She  raised  her 
eyes :  they  were  bright.  "And,  if  I  may  say  it  as  a  friend,  I 
want  you  to  go.  I'm  proud  of  you."  She  had  her  cue  now: 
he  had  given  it  her.  "I'm  proud  that  a  friend  should  go." 
She  took  his  hand  from  her  shoulder,  pressed  it  lightly — . 


298  VICTOKIOUS 

dropped  it.  "Hurry,"  she  said.  "You'll  be  late  if  you  don't, 
and  it  would  never  do  to  begin  being  a  soldier  by  being  late." 
She  was  bidding  him  farewell  with  a  smile.  "Good  luck  to 
you — friend !"  .  .  . 

When  she  had  run  a  few  steps,  she  stopped  and  looked  after 
him,  but  saw  that  he  did  not  once  turn. 

Close  by  the  station  was  a  church  into  which  she  entered. 
Before  a  figure  of  the  Blessed  Virgin — a  poor  modern  thing, 
it  was — she  knelt  until  she  knew  that  his  train  had  gone. 

VI 

Andy  sat  beside  a  window  in  a  third-class  carriage  and 
watched  the  brown  fields  and  white  hamlets  race  past  him. 
Luckily,  he  was  the  only  American  there,  and  the  other  pas 
sengers  assumed  that  he  could  not  speak  French.  Through 
his  brain,  pictures,  rather  than  thoughts,  were  hurrying  much 
as  the  objects  along  the  railway -track  were  hurrying  before 
his  eyes,  but  the  realities  had  a  certain  order  and  a  limited 
variety;  his  memories  had  neither. 

There  was  his  mother.  He  knew  how  she  would  seem  to 
take  the  news  of  his  enlistment.  But  how  would  her  heart 
receive  it  ? 

There  was  Blunston.    Would  Blunston  understand? 

And  the  newspapers  that  he  had  been  serving.  Perhaps  he 
should  have  given  them  fair  warning;  perhaps,  in  perform 
ing  one  duty,  he  was  betraying  another. 

He  would  have  to  work  hard  and  long  to  make  good  the 
forfeited  bond.  After  the  war  was  over.  Unless,  of  course — 

But  he  wasn't  going  to  be  killed — 

He  hoped —  How  frightful  if  he  were  maimed,  if  his  whole 
earning-capacity  were  spoiled,  if  he  came  out  of  this  hell 
of  war  a  creature  hideous  andvuseless,  like  some  that  one  had 
seen  on  wheeled  chairs  in  the  sunlight  before  military  hos 
pitals  and  would  some  day  soon  see  squatted  at  street  corners 
with  an  upturned  hat  deposited  beside  them — the  pedestrians 
with  averted  faces — the  clank  of  dropped  coppers ! 

He  remembered  Americus,  and  Elm  Avenue  of  a  bright 


VICTORIOUS  299 

Saturday  night  in  midsummer.  He  remembered  its  kindly 
people. 

Minnie  Taylor:  she  would  have  had  a  chance,  if  she  had 
got  over  here. 

What  had  McGregor  meant  by  writing  such  a  letter — and 
what  did  it  matter  what  he  meant,  now? 

It  had  been  kind  of  Sylvia  to  come  to  wish  him  Godspeed, 
and  he  had  behaved  insufferably  to  her !  He  had  blamed  her 
because  she  was  not  what  he  had  thought  her.  Why,  she  al 
ways  disclaimed  being  that !  There  was,  of  course,  no  doubt 
about  her;  but  one  could  be  kindly  without  being  a  saint: 
there  was  more  than  a  single  sort  of  nobility,  even  for  women. 
He  would  try  to  be  her  friend,  when  he  came  back.  More  he 
could  not  be,  but  this  he  could  and  would.  His  love — 

That  remained.  It  remained  loyal  to  his  ideal.  The  ideal 
lived:  it  was  immortal.  His  fault  it  was — not  Sylvia's,  nor 
the  faultless  ideal's — if  he  had  confused  the  ideal  with  the 
fallible  human.  The  dream,  freed  of  earth  and  its  beauty 
emancipated,  would  endure. 

It  was  one  with  democracy.  He  shared  it,  a  goddess,  with 
all  these  young  enthusiasts  whom  he  was  about  to  join. 
Fronting  the  overwhelming  hosts  out  of  Germany,  she  would 
at  last  overwhelm  them;  unseen  by  martinets,  she  would 
compel  them  to  be  men — was  already  compelling  them.  Had 
she  been  deluded  by  a  few  autocratic  politicians  at  home? 
She  would  return,  victorious,  to  scourge  them  from  her  des 
ecrated  temple.  .  .  . 

VII 

He  came  to  the  place  for  which  he  had  set  out.  A  calm 
rested  on  the  dun  hills.  At  first  it  was  impossible  to  believe 
that  there  was  a  war.  Perhaps  he  was  dreaming;  perhaps  he 
would  wake  up  in  his  attic  room  in  Americus  with  the 
thumbed  school-books,  and  his  paints,  and  the  dance  pro 
grams  looking  at  him  from  his  dressing-table  and  his  mother 
telling  him  that  if  he  did  not  get  up  he  would  be  late  at  the 
office. 

But  no,  he  was  awake.   He  was  on  the  station  platform  in 


300  VICTORIOUS 

charge  of  another  sergeant,  who  looked  at  him  scornfully  and 
demanded:  "What  the  hell  did  you  enlist  for?"  They  were 
tramping  a  road  full  of  great  ruts  of  hardened  mud.  From 
some  unseen  valley  came  a  clatter  of  machine-gun  practice 
like  the  noise  of  typewriters  in  a  busy  office.  They  skirted 
the  foot  of  a  knoll  and  saw  a  regiment  drilling  in  extended 
order.  They  were  standing  beside  a  white  farmhouse,  and 
from  above  it  fluttered  the  beautiful  Flag. 

Andy's  eyes  filled  at  the  sight  of  it.  More  than  ever  it  was 
now  his  flag:  he  was  at  last  a  soldier. 

VIII 

Or  learning  to  be,  and  in  a  hard  school,  under  hard  mas 
ters  and  among  hard  pupils.  He  was  a  "doughboy" :  he  had 
chosen  the  infantry  because  he  thought  that  it  was  the  in 
fantry  which  did  the  most  arduous  work  of  war.  His  unit 
was  newly  arrived  and  had  had  little  training  before  it  set 
sail  from  America — some  twenty  men,  last-moment  failures 
in  aviation,  had  never  shouldered  a  rifle  before  landing  in 
France — but  there  was  a  sprinkling  of  sergeants  from  the 
ranks  of  the  old  Regular  Army  and  some  corporals  out  of  the 
National  Guard,  and  these,  whose  previous  experience  seemed 
to  Andy  to  include  a  year  or  two  each  as  under-keepers  in 
prisons  or  as  chain-gang  bosses,  were  putting  the  utterly  un 
learned  through  the  "School  of  the  Soldier,"  the  "School  of 
the  Squad"  and  the  "Manual  of  Arms."  It  looked  hopeless, 
it  was  profanely  declared  impossible;  yet,  under  one's  eyes, 
it  was  being  done. 

Andy  used  to  think  his  correspondent's  knapsack  heavy. 
Within  twenty-four  hours,  his  identification  tag  newly  sus 
pended  from  his  neck,  he  was  learning  what  number-two  man 
in  the  rear  rank  does  in  response  to  the  order  "Squads  Right" 
while  carrying  eight  and  a  half  pounds  of  rifle  on  his  shoul 
der,  two  hundred  and  twenty  cartridges  in  his  belt  and  bando 
liers,  a  bayonet  in  a  heavy  scabbard,  a  haversack,  a  first-aid 
pouch,  a  filled  canteen  topped  by  a  drinking-cup,  and,  down 
the  middle  of  his  back,  under  an  entrenching  tool,  a  marvel- 


YICTOEIOUS  301 

ously  put  together  and  speedily  spilled  roll  that  his  compan 
ions  called  an  0.  D.  (or  olive  drab)  Baby  and  that  held  the 
half  of  a  shelter  tent,  five  metal  tent-pins,  a  poncho,  a  blanket, 
a  meat-can  and  a  condiment  can,  knife,  fork  and  spoon,  under 
clothes,  socks,  shoelaces,  comb,  tooth-brush,  soap,  towel  and  a 
sewing-outfit.  It  was  not  until  evening  that  number  three- 
man  told  him  how  to  roll  one  sock  to  look  like  two  and  a 
shirt  to  resemble  shirt  and  drawers. 

"For  me,"  Andy  was  soon  writing  home,  "the  worst  of  it 
is  the  rifle.  A  bit  of  grease  on  it  is  a  misdemeanor  and  a 
rust-speck's  a  crime.  Nobody  ever  told  us  how  to  clean  the 
confounded  things,  but  Fve  found  a  man  that  stole  a  can  of 
gasoline  from  the  truck-gang,  and  a  few  drops  of  that  (if 
you're  not  caught)  will  do  in  ten  minutes  more  than  all  my 
rubbing  does  in  an  hour.  Before  I  found  that  out,  I  had  a 
hard  time.  The  day  before  an  inspection,  we  marched,  in  the 
usual  rain,  halted  in  it,  stacked  arms,  retook  arms  and 
marched  again.  Back  in  billets,  I  thought  I'd  never  clean  my 
gun — just  splashed  it  with  oil  and  let  it  go  at  that.  Next 
morning,  when  the  inspection  began,  I  happened  to  see  the 
number  on  it  (you  have  to  remember  all  sorts  of  numbers) 
and  found  it  wasn't  mine  at  all.  Betaking  arms  on  that 
march,  my  file-leader'd  given  me  his  gun,  so  I  traded  for  my 
own  then  and  there.  Well,  that  file-leader  was  a  hunting-man 
from  Maine;  he  understood  rifles  and'd  got  mine  into  good 
shape,  but  he  got  a  call  on  his  own  when  the  captain  saw  the 
way  I'd  left  it!" 

Rushed  through  the  Infantry  Drill  Regulations,  the  awk 
ward  squads  were  redistributed  about  the  unit  and  absorbed 
in  the  general  scheme  for  intensive  training.  They  were  set 
to  digging  five  kinds  of  trenches,  to  constructing  the  sandbag 
loopholes  and  the  hopper,  to  rigging  a  hand-grenade  screen 
and  to  do  strange  things  with  barbed  wire. 

"Imagine  a  little  valley  of  pasture  lands,"  wrote  Andy. 
"When  you  first  look  at  it,  you  don't  see  anything  strange, 
but  when  you  get  nearer  you  can  make  out  that  the  fields  are 
all  cut  up  by  lines,  like  fresh  furrows  that  a  weighted  plow 


302  VICTORIOUS 

would  make  behind  a  runaway  horse.  They're  really  a  tangle 
of  dug-outs,  first-line  and  communication  trenches — and  I 
helped  make  'em! — It's  all  mighty  different,  being  a  sol 
dier,  from  writing  about  being." 

A  company  would  disappear  into  those  rifle-pits  and  pres 
ently  project  above  them  cardboard  figures  of  men.  At  once 
— for  this  drill  was  conducted  under  a  time  test — another 
company  would  run  forward  from  a  given  distance,  form  as 
"skirmishers,"  drop  to  the  ground  and  fire  a  designated  num 
ber  of  rounds  "at  will" ;  rise,  run  on,  drop  and  fire  a  second 
time.  The  bullets  rattled  against  the  farthest  hillside,  tore 
up  little  spurts  of  dust  in  front  of  the  trenches,  pierced  the 
cardboard  enemy.  A  third  advance  and  a  third  volley,  and 
then,  after  the  score  was  registered,  a  second  company  re 
peated  the  performance. 

Hand-grenade  practice  followed.  Next,  the  machine-guns 
would  rush  up  and  were  put  into  action  in  an  attempt  at 
record  time.  After  that  came  the  bayonet-charge. 

Fronting  a  barbed-wire  entanglement,  in  a  line  of  trenches 
three  deep,  was  a  company  of  dummy  men,  on  the  breast  of 
each  of  which  lay  a  numbered  paper-tag ;  behind  the  trenches 
was  some  rough  ground,  and  back  of  that  —  perhaps  fifty 
paces  back — a  row  of  sticks  with  a  tin-can  poised  on  the  top 
of  every  stick.  A  whistle  would  blow:  out  of  other  trenches 
leaped  Andy  and  his  companions,  rifles  in  hand,  bayonets 
fixed;  they  plunged  through  the  wire  and  at  the  dummies, 
each  soldier  collecting  upon  his  bayonet  as  many  of  the  num 
bered  tags  as  he  could,  and  then,  having  raced  over  the  rough 
ened  ground,  they  flung  themselves  prone  and  fired  at  the 
tin-cans. 

If  this  sort  of  thing  at  first  sickened  Andy,  the  preliminary 
lectures  were  worse.  For  them,  a  cheerful  major  stood,  with 
rifle  and  fixed  bayonet  in  hand,  before  a  swinging  dummy. 
The  dummy  had  a  lolling  head,  for  all  the  world  like  that 
of  a  hanged  man,  and  clamped  at  right  angles  to  the  figure's 
side  was  a  stick  that  made  erratic  thrusts;  numbers  were 
painted  on  him  to  indicate  his  vital  parts. 


VICTORIOUS  303 

"Now,  when  you  get  into  a  charge,"  said  the  major  merrily, 
"remember  that,  as  sure  as  you  don't  get  your  man,  he'll  get 
you.  You  must  get  him  first,  or  you'll  be  out  of  luck." 

He  proceeded  to  tell  how  the  old  method  was  now  harm 
less: 

"The  best  place  to  get  your  man  is  in  the  belly,  because 
that's  fatal,  and  there  aren't  any  bones  to  tangle  you  up.  Try 
and  get  him  in  the  belly.  If  you've  got  to  go  for  his  neck, 
be  sure  it's  with  a  cut  and  not  a  lunge.  If  you  jab  him  there, 
instead  of  cutting,  like  as  not  you'll  run  your  bayonet  up 
in  his  skull,  and  it'll  stick  there,  and  while  you've  got  your 
foot  on  his  face,  wrenching  it  out,  the  man  behind  him  will 
get  you." 

The  listeners'  expressions  were  worth  watching.  Some  be 
gan  with  a  grin;  few  finished  so. 

That  sort  of  life  left  little  daytime  for  thought,  but  a  good 
deal  for  personal  discouragement,  and  some,  even,  for  a  bat 
tle  against  tears.  It  was  not  until  several  days  had  passed  that 
he  realized  that  he  was  not  the  only  recruit  incurring  the 
sergeant's  condemnations,  that  to  be  sworn  at  and  despaired 
of  was  a  regular  part  of  the  training  and  that  one  might  be 
a  brandedly  hopeless  case  to-night  and  a  genuine  soldier  to 
morrow. 


A  caterpillar  accustomed  to  one  sort  of  leaves  is  likely  to 
starve  himself  to  death  rather  than  eat  of  another  sort,  no 
matter  how  good  for  his  kind  in  general  the  second  sort  may 
be,  and  Andy  could  not  be  expected  to  like  at  once  the  new 
conditions  of  his  life.  There  had  been  a  time  when  he  was 
the  sartorial  glory  of  the  Americus,  Pa.,  Daily  Spy,  and  had 
considered  a  man  with  dirty  hands  as  much  to  be  avoided  as 
a  leper,  and  for  similar  reasons;  subsequent  experiences  had 
broadened  him,  but  no  hardening  process  had  begun  when  he 
came  to  a  camp  where  his  first  introduction  to  a  barber  left 
him  shorn  like  some  sort  of  semi-convict,  where  his  only 
clothes  were  a  speedily  soiled  uniform  that  had  been  too  small 


304:  VICTORIOUS 

to  begin  with,  and  where  the  niceties  of  civilization  could  not 
have  been  practised  had  they  been  deemed  requisite. 

The  kitchen  was  an  only  partly  converted  blacksmith- 
shop,  and  most  of  the  provisions  were  piled  outside  of  it  in 
lath  cases  that  did  not  protect  them  from  the  flies.  Every 
meal  in  which  potatoes  were  to  play  a  part — and  that  was 
most  meals — was  begun  by  eight  men  sitting  on  the  curb  and 
"peeling  the  spuds"  beside  the  gutter.  Sweating  cooks,  in 
side,  stirred  the  contents  of  gigantic  pots  with  whittled  sticks. 
At  mess-time,  the  hungry  filed  by  the  servers,  and  the  latter, 
out  of  huge  ladles,  flung  the  food  into  the  tin  utensils  that 
the  former  held  out  to  them.  When  the  weather  was  dry, 
Andy  squatted  in  the  road  and  ate  there ;  when  it  was  wet,  he 
leaned  against  a  house-wall.  .He  soon  discovered  that  a  serv 
ice-shirt  is  the  army's  only  substitute  for  a  napkin. 

His  dwelling-place  was  the  loft  of  an  ancient  barn.  There 
were  rats  in  the  barn  and  on  its  inhabitants  fleas  and  lice,  so 
that  one's  spare  time  was  largely  devoted  to  futile  efforts 
toward  appreciably  decreasing  the  number  of  one's  vermin. 
The  roof  of  the  barn  leaked,  and  its  only  window  was  glass- 
less.  The  sloping  walls  were  decorated  by  one  or  two  pictures 
clipped  from  the  Sunday  supplements  of  American  newspa 
pers,  and  somebody  had  put  up  a  rude  sign: 

SPIT  ON  THE  FLOOR 

//  tJiat's  what  you  do  at  home,  for 

WE  WANT  YOU  TO  FEEL  AT  HOME  HERE! 

His  straw-bed  was  always  damp,  and  yet  he  was  never  sorry 
when  the  hour  came  to  seek  it. 

Out  in  the  muddy  street  a  bugle  would  sound.  His  dormi 
tory  companions  would  knock  out  the  pipes  and  pinch  the 
cigarettes  that  had  filled  the  place  with  acrid  smoke.  Candles 
would  be  extinguished.  The  sole  remaining  light  would  be 
a  sputtering  lamp  that  gave  forth  more  of  odor  than  of 
illumination.  Instantly,  the  other  men  would  fall  asleep  in 
whatever  posture  happened  to  be  that  in  which  their  bodies 
struck  the  straw.  They  breathed  stertorously ;  they  scratched 
themselves  without  waking. 


VICTORIOUS  305 

To  Andy  they  became  at  once  so  many  ghosts.  The  whole 
world  faded  away,  and  he  was  left  alone  with  his  fear. 

For  he  was  afraid  that  he  was  going  to  be  afraid.  By  day, 
he  could  make  himself  believe  in  that  metamorphosis  into  a 
soldier.  At  the  approach  of  night  he  always  turned  in  gladly 
certain  that  his  infinite  weariness  would  steep  him  in  sleep. 
But  no  sooner  was  the  ribaldry  of  the  hayloft  silenced  than 
he  was  wide  awake  and  trembling.  He  saw  himself  running 
away  from  an  approaching  party  of  raiders,  fainting  at  the 
order  to  go  over  the  top;  he  saw  himself  in  every  role  that  a 
coward  could  assume.  He  wondered  why  none  of  the  other 
fellows  should  feel  this  fear  of  fear :  they  all  talked  like  ber 
serkers.  He  tried  to  tell  himself  that  bravery  was  a  matter 
of  the  will,  but  he  remembered  the  rabbit  that  he  could  not. 
kill,  and  the  major's  lectures  on  bayonetting;  and  he  said  to 
himself  that  perhaps  his  arms  and  legs  would  rebel  against 
his  will. 

Physically,  he  was  not  a  strong  boy,  and  it  was  only  grit 
that  made  it  possible  for  him  to  survive  the  physical  hard 
ships  of  his  training.  It  was  this  same  grit  that  he  opposed 
to  his  dread  of  cowardice. 


His  was  one  of  the  early  units  of  the  draft-army  to  reach 
France,  and  in  Andy's  company  were  young  fellows  of  each 
year  covered  by  the  first  conscription  law.  The  wide  democ 
racy  of  the  uniform  was  complete:  every  trade  was  repre 
sented,  and  most  of  the  professions;  there  were  club-men  and 
mill-workers,  bond-salesmen  and  shop-clerks;  there  was  a 
young  lawyer  and  a  college  under-graduate,  and  a  sturdy 
Irishman  that  had  begun  his  career  in  the  police.  Ibrahim 
Reshid  was  Turkish-born,  and  said  his  prayers  with  his  face 
toward  Mecca  and  splashed  water  on  himself  thrice  a  day; 
Carlo  Angelelli,  who  looked  like  a  Greek  statue,  came  from 
Calabria  and  went  to  mass  on  Sundays  in  the  village  church, 
whereas,  though  he  resembled  a  Genoese  and  had  a  brogue 
that  would  have  pronounced  him  an  Irishman,  Christos 


306  VICTORIOUS 

Christopoulos  was  a  native  of  Aetolikon  and  had  no  church 
te  go  to  in  the  camp.  There  was  Kozlofr1,  a  Russian,  who  used 
to  push  rolling-chairs  at  Atlantic  City,  and  Schwartz  from 
Hochwald  and,  finally,  there  were  such  men  as  Winters  and 
Levy,  Davies,  Campbell  and  Flynn,  whose  folk,  although 
Flynn  also  spoke  in  a  brogue,  had  lived  in  the  United  States 
for  at  least  three  generations.  These  last  had  all  the  unemo 
tional  practicality  with  which  the  American  masks  the  fact 
that  he  is  a  dreamer,  and  adopted  all  the  coarseness  under 
which  he  is  likely  to  conceal  such  troubles  as  nostalgia;  but 
every  one  of  the  company  wanted,  above  all  else,  a  chance  to 
fight. 

"If  the  damn-fool  brass-hats'd  only  send  us  in,  I  wouldn't 
bother  so  much  about  home,"  said  tow-headed  Winters,  "and 
there'd  be  something  else  for  Johnson  and  Ryan  to  yell  their 
damn'  throats  out  at,  then." 

Johnson,  a  cross-eyed  factory-foreman,  was  corporal  of 
Andy's  squad,  possessed  of  a  really  remarkable  vocabulary  in 
oaths  that  shook  his  whole  body  as  it  hurled  its  missiles  from 
his  lips.  Heavy-fisted  Ryan  was  the  company's  first-sergeant, 
who  had  been  a  welter-weight  boxer  and  did  not  find  his 
previous  trade  useless  in  the  practice  of  his  present  calling. 

"Ryan  never  hits  me,"  said  Andy,  but  he  knew  that  the 
sergeant  treated  him  with  a  pitying  contempt  that  was  worse 
than  blows. 

"Oh,  me  neither,"  bristled  Winters.  "I'd  like  to  see  him 
try  it !  He'd  find  somethin'  ticklin'  his  damn'  back,  first  time 
we  went  over  the  top." 

"He  chust  keeps  his  fist  for  Reshid  und  them  foreign  fel 
lers,"  Schwartz  explained. 

One  of  the  lieutenants  was  scarcely  more  popular  than 
Ryan:  Wilson,  graduate  from  a  Reserve  Officers'  Training 
Camp,  whom  the  men  called  "President";  but  he  was  soon 
to  be  transferred  elsewhere.  The  other,  Graaberg,  second- 
lieutenant  and  son  of  Norwegian  parents,  everybody  liked. 
Their  captain — "but  he  only  got  his  rank  for  the  duration  ef 
the  war,"  said  Winters — was  named  Bates,  a  wiry  person  of 
forty-five,  whose  face  resembled  smoked  meat,  and  whose  tern- 


VICTORIOUS  307 

per  had  been  soured  by  West  Point  jealousies  of  his  advance 
ment — he  had  enlisted  as  a  private  during  the  Philippine  re 
bellion — and  who,  generally  silent,  seemed  to  speak  only  un 
der  the  impulsion  of  a  temper  no  longer  to  be  restrained. 

XI 

In  his  scant  leisure,  Andy  hung  about  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  hut 
at  the  end  of  the  village  and  wrote  his  shy  letters  home.  They 
were  intended  to  be  cheerful  letters  and  were  the  poorest 
piece  of  work  he  did  in  France.  To  Blunston  he  quoted  the 
infantryman's  song: 

"Here  come  the  doughboys 

With  dirt  behind  their  ears ! 
Here  come  the  doughboys — 
Their  pay  is  in  arrears ! 
The  cavalry, 
Artillery, 

And  the  lousy  engineers — 
They  couldn't  lick  the  doughboys  in 
A  hundred  thousand  years  I" 

To  his  mother  he  made  light  of  his  various  inoculations 
and  their  immediate  effects  of  headache  and  a  sore  arm;  he 
joked  about  the  fleas,  but  said  nothing  of  the  lice  and  did 
not  tell  how  he  was  sometimes  wakened,  of  nights,  by  rats 
that  scurried  across  his  face. 

He  had  a  fight  with  Flynn,  who  was  his  file-leader  and, 
quite  truthfully,  accused  Andy  of  tramping  on  other  people's 
heels:  Flynn  had  to  knock  him  down  three  times,  and  even 
then  Andy  would  not  admit  defeat,  and  Winters  dragged  him 
away.  Davies,  a  giant  of  a  fellow,  gave  him  maliciously  in- 
correct  instructions  about  clip-fire,  laughed  at  him  when  the 
consequent  error  called  forth  picturesque  insults  from  Ser 
geant  Ryan  and  earned  a  grudge  that  Andy  carried  for  many 
days.  All  the  men  in  his  company,  talking  as  if  they  had 
had  experience,  filled  him  with  tales  of  the  enemy's  power, 
told  of  the  terrible  slaughter  of  semicircling  German  ma- 


308  VICTOKIOUS 

chine-guns  that  fired  seven  hundred  shots  a  minute,  and 
affirmed  that  the  American  Army's  hospitals  in  France  were 
already  taxed  beyond  their  two  hundred  thousand  capacity. 
.  .  .  Andy  looked  away  and  wrestled  with  the  fear  of  fear. 

"They  say  we  ain't  got  a  damn'  aeroplane  of  our  own  at 
the  front,"  said  Winters. 

"I  was  talking  to  a  man,"  said  the  gigantic  Davies,  "that 
has  a  brother  up  in  the  artillery,  a  man  in  C  Company.  He 
says  all  our  guns,  pretty  near,  are  French.  He  told  me  we 
hadn't  got  across  any  explosive  shells  bigger  than  the  three- 
inch  ones.  We  can't  shell  our  objectives,  he  said,  and  so,  when 
we  doughboys  go  over  the  top,  the  Heinies  chaw  us  all  up. 
Gimme  a  cigarette,  somebody." 

"The  tanks  can  go  ahead  of  the  infantry,"  said  Andy. 

"  'Could,'  you  mean,"  Davies  disdainfully  corrected :  "we 
"haven't  got  any  tanks. — Gimme  a  match,  will  you  ?" 

Yet,  when  they  were  not  playing  practical  jokes  on  Andy, 
these  men  were  all  complaining  because  the  high  command 
did  not  send  them  at  once  into  action.  They  hated  the  high 
command ;  there  was  none  of  them  that  did  not  consider  him 
self  a  better  strategist  than  any  member  of  the  staff. 

"Ker-ist,"  said  Campbell,  whose  face  was  always  caked 
with  dirt,  "I  wisht  I  was  boss  for  one  day.  We'd  all  go  in 
to-morrow  and  walk  the  Dutchmen  acrost  the  Ehine."  He 
proceeded  to  draw  maps  in  the  dust  and  show  how  his  cam 
paign  could  not  fail. 

Captain  Bates  and  Lieutenant  Wilson  were  daily  dispar 
aged.  "Know  'em  as  well  as  if  I'd  et  'em  for  last  night's 
supper,"  Winters  would  say,  "an'  they  taste  like  slum."  By 
quotations  from  the  Infantry  Drill  Regulations  and  the  Field 
Service  Regulations,  he  would  prove  his  assertion;  but  when, 
one  day,  a  man  from  another  company  agreed  with  him,  Win 
ters  thrashed  that  outsider. 

Flynn,  the  squat  American  of  Irish  parentage,  was  one 
of  the  few  that  never  joined  in  these  complaints  until  blows 
followed  mere  words.  Then  he  was  an  active  participant ;  the 
rest  of  the  time,  his  usual  commentary  confined  itself  to  a 
single  point  of  view:  "What's  the  use  o'  worryin'?  Oi  used 


VICTOBIOUS  309 

to,  but  I  soon  learnt  it's  little  enough  good  it  does  us  to 
bother  our  heads  about  th'  War  Departimint,  er  th'  brass- 
hats  either.  Poor  t'ings,  they  dawn't  know  nothin'  at  all, 
they  dawn't.  You  guys  give  me  a  pain." 

It  was  only  Levy  that  could  answer  this.  He  was  a  young 
Jew  that  had  come  out  of  college  and  had  still  the  mental 
marks  of  the  sophomore.  He  objected  that  they  were  all 
having  their  individualities  destroyed  by  being  fitted  to  a 
pattern,  that  they  were  being  made  into  soldiers  according 
to  a  mathematical  formula,  of  which  the  mathematics  were 
faulty.  Their  discussions  continued  until  somebody  turned 
the  talk  to  home,  when  Winters  was  sure  to  accuse  everybody's 
sweetheart,  and  his  own  first,  of  infidelity  during  their  ab 
sence,  or  until  they  united  in  a  chorus  of  derision  for  every 
regiment  in  the  army  except  their  own. 

There  were  times  when  Andy  thought  that  the  sheer  stu 
pidity  and  fullness  of  those  days  would  drive  him  mad.  Until 
the  training  began  to  harden  him,  he  was  sickened  by  the 
coarseness  of  it  all.  No  matter  what  the  previous  life  of  these 
young  men  had  been,  this  routine  existence  seemed  to  lower 
them  all  to  a  common  level ;  their  very  speech  became  equal 
ized,  and  it  was  never  worse  than  at  mess.  There  was  no 
privacy  in  any  act  of  life,  and,  apparently,  no  thought  that 
was  held  sacred. 

One  day,  walking  down  the  village  street,  Andy  said  as 
much  to  Winters. 

"Whaddje  mean  'sacred'?"  Winters  demanded. 

<fWell,  there  used  to  be  some  things  a  fellow  didn't  talk 
about,"  said  Andy.  "Weren't  there?" 

"Sure,  Mike.  But  we're  soldiers  now.  I  only  wish  they'd 
let  us  be  honest-to-God  soldiers."  He  went  on  to  damn  the 
army  as  worthless;  then  he  drew  himself  to  attention  before 
the  advance  of  an  erect  military  figure,  a  man  with  a  weather- 
beaten  face  and  silvered  hair. 

"Salute,  you  lousy  skunk!"  whispered  Winters.  His  eyes 
sparkled  admiration.  "This  here's  our  general,  this  is!" 


310  yiCTOEIOTJS 

XII 

Then,  for  Andy's  salvation,  Chrissly  came  to  camp — en 
viably  a  veteran  and  still  more  amiably  fresh  from  home — a 
Chrissly  in  a  new  uniform,  his  accent  almost  entirely  gone 
with  his  return  to  France.  He  had  been  transferred  to  Andy's 
own  regiment  and  assigned  to  Andy's  own  company.  Blun- 
ston,  he  said,  had  arranged  part  of  it  from  Washington,  and 
the  colonel  did  the  rest  here. 

They  almost  embraced  each  other.  They  talked  for  a  long 
time  only  of  Americus,  and  Andy  was  as  overjoyed  at  the 
copies  of  the  Spy  that  Chrissly  brought  him  as  Chrissly  had 
once  been  at  those  sent  him  by  Andy.  The  only  subject  they 
avoided  mentioning  was  Minnie  Taylor. 

"You're  lookin'  right  good,"  said  Chrissly,  surveying  with 
approval  the  soldierly  person  that  Andy  had  become. 

"I'm  all  right  enough,"  said  Andy. 

They  shook  hands  again — perhaps  it  was  for  the  third  time 
since  their  meeting.  Chrissly,  who  knew  an  easy  way  to  learn 
and  remember  everything,  at  once  took  Andy  for  his  especial 
pupil ;  being  a  man  that  had  been  wounded,  the  former  farm- 
boy  was  a  hero  in  their  company,  and  his  ward  ceased  imme 
diately  to  be  anybody's  butt. 

XIII 

Chrissly  had  seen  Leonie.  By  arranging  to  lose  his  way 
the.  day  after  landing,  he  managed  to  go  first  to  the  village 
in  which  his  own  training  had  been  done,  and  arriving  there 
of  an  evening,  and  avoiding  any  awkward  military  answers 
by  jumping  off  the  train  fifty  yards  before  the  station  and 
clambering  over  a  fence,  proceeded  to  the  old  inn  and  entered 
the  kitchen  through  the  paved  court. 

Dinner  was  over,  and  the  other  servants  were  all  in  the 
front  of  the  house.  Leonie,  worn  out  by  a  hard  day's  work, 
had  been  overcome  by  fatigue  as  she  finished  her  labors,  and, 
like  the  healthy  animal  she  was,  fell  asleep  in  a  chair  the 
moment  she  finished  them.  On  a  freshly  scrubbed  and  lamp- 
lit  table  her  round  arms  were  outspread,  and  upon  them  her 


VICTOKIOUS  311 

black  head  rested.  Her  face  was  in  the  light  and  turned  to 
ward  the  door ;  Chrissly,  entering,  saw  the  grave  brows  above 
the  closed  lids,  the  dusky  cheeks  touched  with  pink,  the  red 
lips  that,  parted  ever  so  little,  permitted  a  pearly  hint  of  the 
teeth  behind  them.  He  saw  her  firm  neck  from  which  the 
loosened  collar  was  drawn  free  below  the  line  of  the  sunburn, 
and,  under  it,  the  full  breasts  rising  and  falling  regularly. 
Leonie  slept  with  the  abandon  of  a  child ;  her  hands,  relaxed, 
lay  open  on  the  table,  the  fingers  only  curled  above  the  rosy 
palms. 

Chrissly  whispered  her  name. 

She  raised  her  head  as  a  panther  does,  but  lie  stood  in  the 
shadow,  and  she  did  not  at  once  see  him. 

'<Leonie !"  he  repeated. 

He  came  forward. 

With  a  little  cry,  she  put  out  her  hands  to  him.  Then, 
before  he  could  grasp  them,  they  flew  to  her  face  to  hide  the 
betrayal  that  she  felt  there,  and  when  he  tried  gently  to  pull 
her  fingers  away,  they  remembered  the  disorder  of  her  hair, 
and,  that  they  might  repair  it,  her  arms  rose  high. 

She  was  very  beautiful.  Where  sleep  had  lain  upon  her 
cheeks  its  warmth  still  lingered ;  her  eyes  were  wide  with  still 
uncertain  wonder.  Her  woman's  guard  of  self  had  been  down, 
and  there  was  now  no  time  to  raise  it.  At  first  instinctively 
retreating,  she  nevertheless  did  not  resist  when  Chrissly,  mov 
ing  with  the  directness  of  a  boy,  recaptured  her  errant  hands ; 
instead,  she  let  him  draw  them  toward  him,  released  them 
only  to  place  them  about  his  neck  as  she  put  up  her  mouth 
to  his. 

"Mais,  mon  Dieu,  que  je  suis  contente!"  she  breathed. 

It  was  the  longest  moment  of  his  life,  because  it  was  that 
one  most  full  of  meaning.  He  had  premeditated  nothing, 
but  he  had  accomplished  all.  She  was  his,  completely  and 
forever.  In  that  touch  of  lips  it  had  happened,  her  trans 
forming  surrender.  Even  her  potentialities  were  his  own,  her 
limitations  circumscribed  by  his  limitations.  It  was  un 
changeable,  and  Chrissly  entered  his  heaven  reverently  and 
in  awe. 


312  VICTORIOUS 

Outside,  under  the  stars,  she  confessed,  without  shame, 
how  she  had  longed  for  him,  and  he,  in  his  recovered  French, 
told  her  how  he  had  been  wounded  and  how  sent  home.  He 
told  her  where  he  was  going,  and  she  confided  to  him  her 
plan  presently  to  return  to  her  native  village,  whither  other 
folk  that  had  heen  exiled  were  now  returning.  These  lovers 
swore  to  meet  there  "apres  la  giwrre"  and  it  was  not  until 
they  began  their  long  parting  that  she  asked  her  woman's 
question : 

"But  it  is  true,  is  it  not,  that  you  have  loved  some  one  else 
before?" 

"Ah,  it  is  true,"  laughed  Chrissly,  "but  I  am  much  harder 
to  suit  than  I  was  then."  .  .  . 

3TV 

The  trenches  at  the  camp  were  narrower  than  they  should 
have  been,  and  in  the  practice-charges  on  them  some  one  was 
always  being  bayonetted.  Andy  was  cut  in  the  hand  one  day, 
and  his  comrades  hung  about  him  while  the  wound  was 
dressed. 

"Come  away  from  there,"  Captain  Bates  grimly  ordered. 
"You'll  be  seeing  all  you  want  of  that  sort  of  thing  soon 
enough  to  suit  you." 

This  made  everybody  happily  certain  that  the  regiment  was 
soon  to  move. 

3T 

It  became  a  regular  evening  custom  for  the  company  to 
gather  outside  the  barn  in  which  Andy  slept  and  there  listen 
to  Chrissly  talking  of  the  people  at  home. 

"I  got  enough  of  ?em — all  but  my  own  folks,"  he  said. 
"They  made  me  sick.  They're  terribly  ensusiastic — give  you 
parades  an'  lots  to  eat;  but  they  don't  know  nussing.  Nearly 
everybody  gets  into  some  sort  of  a  uniform  and  then  sinks 
he's  winning  the  war — or  'specially  her.  You  ought  to  hear 
the  fellows  with  five  an'  ten  dollar  a  day  mill- jobs  say  they're 
doin'  their  part  same  as  us're  doin'  ourn.  The  country's  full 


yiCTOEIOUS  313 

of  soft  snaps.  There's  fourteen-year-old  kids  gettin'  seven- 
teen-fifty  a  week  waitin'  on  officers'  messes  at  munition-fac 
tories,  an'  we  draw  a  dollar  a  day  to  fight  in  France." 

"When  we  do  draw  it,"  amended  Winters,  who  had  never 
heard  a  gun  fired,  save  in  practice. 

"An'  you  can't  make  'em  unerstand  what  fer  a  battle's 
like,"  Chrissly  continued.  "I  guess  it's  so  bad  nobody  could; 
an'  the  censors  over  here,  it  seems  they  don't  want  'em  to, 
anyways.  Besides,  they've  all  kind  of  got  their  minds  made 
up  about  sings.  To  read  the  stuff  in  the  papers,  you'd  sink 
we  was  an  infant-class  at  a  Sunday-school  picnic.  The  people 
back  there,  they  don't  seem  to  want  to  know.  Try  an'  make 
'em  unerstand,  an'  they  just  says,  'Well,  that  was  tough, 
wasn't  it  now?' — an'  go  on  tellin'  you  they  bought  a  Liberty 
Bond  as  ain't  paid  fer  yet  an'll  be  sold  before  it  is  paid  fer." 

They  asked  him  if  it  were  true  that  the  ports  were  full  of 
unshipped  shells. 

"An'  then  some,"  said  Chrissly.  He  did  not  hesitate  to 
give  as  first-hand  what  he  had  received  at  second.  "The  De 
partment's  distributed  the  manufacture  of  parts  an'  can't 
assemble  'em.  An'  tanks !  I  seen  a  tank-school  up  to  Gettys 
burg — some  of  the  people  at  home  took  me  fer  a  joyride  to 
.Gettysburg  in  their  automobile:  six  sousand  men  an'  one 
tank!  They  kep'  it  in  a  kind  of  shed,  like  it  was  a  sacred 
white  elephant  an'  the  rain  might  hurt  it,  an'  if  you're  a  good 
boy  they  take  you  around  once  in  a  while  an'  give  you  a  peep 
at  it." 

He  said  he  had  never  seen  so  many  lieutenants  as  home 
now  boasted,  and  he  was  hard  on  the  officers  of  the  Ordnance 
Department.  He  thought  that  stay-at-home  soldiers  all 
should  wear  distinctive  uniforms,  "'stead  of  usin'  up  warm 
cloth  we  fellows  can't  get  fer  wintertime,"  and  he  repeated 
the  remark  of  the  congressman  who  said  Washington  officers 
wore  spurs  in  order  to  keep  their  feet  on  their  desks. 

"I  wonder  will  they  let  us  have  our  say  when  we  get  back 
home,"  he  would  always  conclude.  "Seem's  if  they'd  been 
doin'  all  the  talkin'  an'  lawmakin'  up  to  now.  All  we're  good 
fer's  to  fight." 


314:  .VICTORIOUS 

XVI 

Andy's  hand  healed  rapidly,  but  it  gave  him  a  few  days  of 
leisure,  and  one  of  these  he  employed  in  a  trip  to  Domremy. 
He  wanted  to  see  the  Bethlehem  of  Jeanne  d'Arc. 

The  grass  was  turning  green  again  when  he  entered  the 
little  garden  that  half  the  American  Army  in  France  already 
knew,  and  an  ancient  sheep-dog  dragged  a  rattling  chain 
from  his  kennel,  only  to  look  at  him  with  the  same  sort  of 
trustful  eyes  that  were  shown  him  by  the  children  to  whom 
he  had  given  pennies  at  the  gate.  The  habitual  old  woman, 
who  vows  that  she,  too,  is  descended  from  Jacques  of  Dom 
remy,  showed  him  through  the  flagged  apartment  with  its 
huge  fireplace,  through  that  in,  which  Joan's  brother  slept, 
and  then  into  Joan's  own. 

Just  a  cell.  A  cell  of  hewn  stone,  such  as  a  nun  might  in 
habit.  A  cell  with  a  mere  slit  in  the  wall  through  which 
Andy  could  see  something  of  the  medieval  church  close  by. 

That  was  all.  But  here  the  Maid  had  knelt.  Here,  as  well 
as  in  those  fields  out  there,  the  angels  came  to  her  with  their 
mighty  message.  Here  were  said  some  of  those  prayers  that, 
long  ago,  saved  France. 

"A  young  wench  of  an  eighteene  years  old.  Of  favour  she 
was  counted  likesome ;  of  person  stronglie  made,  and  manlie ; 
of  courage  great,  hardie,  and  stout  withall;  an  understander 
of  counsels,  though  she  were  not  at  them;  greet  semblance- 
of  chastitie  both  of  bodie  and  behavior;  the  name  of  Jesus 
in  hir  mouth  about  all  their  businesses ;  humble,  obedient  and 
fasting  divers  days."  .  .  . 

In  a  chance  magazine  at  his  village  "Y"  he  had  come 
across  a  poem  by  Joyce  Kilmer: 

"My  shoulders  ache  beneath  my  pack, 
(Lie  easier,  Cross  upon  His  back.) 
I  march  with  feet  that  burn  and  smart, 
.(Tread,  Holy  Feet,  upon  my  heart.) 
Men  shout  at  me  who  may  not  speak, 


VICTOKIOUS  315 

(They  scourged  Thy  back  and  smote  THy  cheek.) 
I  may  not  lift  a  hand  to  clear 
My  eyes  of  salty  drops  that  sear, 
(Then  shall  not  fickle  soul  forget 
Thy  agony  of  bloody  sweat.)" 

Andy  wanted  to  pray. 

Above  the  doorway,  in  a  niche,  stood,  where  a  FrencK  mon 
arch  had  placed  it,  a  mutilated  statue : 

"The  sale  Boche  did  that  in  '70,"  said  the  old  woman. 
And  then  Andy  found  his  soul.  .  .  . 


XVII 


There  was  always  singing  in  the  camp  of  evenings ;  the  men 
would  sit  on  their  bunks,  and  Davies,  Flynn,  Winters  and 
Campbell,  as  a  quartette,  would  lead  them  in  that  unprintable 
American  army  ballad  about  a  fabulous  King  of  England  and 
There's  a  Long,  Long  Trail  A-winding  with  equal  fervor 
and  feeling;  but  heretofore  Andy  had  neither  heart  nor 
strength  to  join  in  the  refrains.  He  had  not  sung  since  he 
had  been  in  France,  and  had  forgotten  that  he  had  a  voice. 
To-night,  however,  in  a  lull  of  the  concert  and  while  he 
scraped  his  muddy  boots,  he  found  himself,  to  his  surprise  and 
that  of  his  companions,  singing  quite  alone,  It's  a  Long  Way 
to  Tipperary,  just  as  he  had  often  sung  it  in  the  mornings 
at  home  when  he  hurried  into  his  clothes  in  order  not  to  be 
late  in  getting  to  the  office  of  the  Daily  Spy. 

Winters  threw  a  boot  at  him.  "Shut  up !  Don't  you  know 
that  song's  bad  luck?  French's  army  sung  it,  and  they're  air 
dead  men  now." 

Chrissly  caught  the  boot  and  tossed  it  at  Winters'  head. 
Flynn  said: 

"Sure  an'  shut  up  yourself !  Can't  you  hear  the  boy's  got 
a  voice?" 

He  had  a  beautiful,  wistful  voice,  the  faithful  successor 
of  his  choir-days,  and  there  and  then  there  began  their  hom 
age  to  it.  Later  big  Davies  secured,  by  highway  robbery,  a 


316  VICTOKIOUS 

mouth-organ  from  a  weakling  in  C  Company,  and  Andy,  dis 
placing  the  unenvious  quartette,  sang  every  evening  to  his 
admiring  comrades.  He  sang,  in  his  pure,  still  boyish  way, 
such  songs  as  Annie  Laurie  and  My  Old  Kentucky  Home 
and  Old  Black  Joe,  and  he  made  them  all  sing  Way 
Down  Upon  the  Suwannee  River.  His  popularity  was 
achieved;  separately  and  confidentially,  all  the  men  he  knew 
came  to  him  and  talked  about  their  parents  and  told  him  the 
names  of  their  girls  back  home. 


XVIII 


On  that  first  evening  of  his  singing,  Andy  was  handed  a  let 
ter  from  McGregor.  The  contractor  wrote  regularly  and 
gravely,  collecting  Andy's  mail  in  Paris  and  forwarding  it; 
his  manner  was  that  of  a  man  with  a  moral  debt  to  discharge. 
He  now  said  he  considered  it  dangerous  in  the  capital  on  ac 
count  of  the  long-range  gun,  and  was  going  to  Aix-les-Bains ; 
he  understood  that  was  an  American  rest-camp,  and  he  hoped 
soon  to  see  Andy  there. 

"I  can  do  my  work  almost  as  well  in  Aix  as  here,"  he 
wrote,  "and  I  can't  do  it  at  all  if  I'm  killed.  You  know  what 
the  Tommy  said  when  the  shell  exploded  in  the  trench  and 
somebody  yelled  that  Bill's  head  was  blown  off ;  he  said,  'Well, 
where  is  'is  'ead?  Blymme,  'e  was  smokin'  my  pipe!'  Now 
you'd  better  take  a  lesson  from  me  and  not  go  exposing  your 
self  unnecessarily;  a  dead  soldier's  no  use  to  his  country." 

There  was  not  a  word  about  Sylvia.  Andy  leaned  from  the 
loft-window  and  tore  the  letter  to  bits,  letting  the  scraps  fall 
into  the  street  below. 

Some  light  still  remained  in  the  sky,  and  by  it  Andy  saw 
a  dull  gray  motor-truck  silently  approaching.  Its  top  dropped 
far  over  the  front;  its  dashboard  rose  high  to  meet  that  de 
pending  top ;  between  these,  crouched  over  the  steering-wheel, 
his  eyes  hidden  by  goggles,  his  face  just  peeping  from  an 
enfolding  scarf,  sat  a  grimy,  stolid  Cochin-Chinaman,  the 


VICTOKIOUS  317 

driver ;  through  the  open  rear  of  the  truck,  as  it  passed,  Andy 
caught  sight  of  French  soldiers  packed  inside — from  twenty 
to  twenty-five  of  them.  He  caught  just  a  sight  of  them  and 
no  more,  because  another  truck  nosed  on  close  hehind  the 
first  one.  Then  came  another.  He  tired  of  counting  them; 
looking  from  north  to  south,  he  saw  that  they  resembled  a 
gigantic  hooded  cobra,  crawling  from  horizon  to  horizon. 
The  night  fell,  and,  with  only  tiny  lights,  they  continued 
passing — passing.  Something  impended:  these  were  camions, 
transporting  troops  from  one  point  of  the  front  to  a  second. 

He  could  hear  them  when  he  went  to  bed.  He  had  meantj 
to  lie  awake,  not  because  of  his  old  fear,  but  rather  to  deter 
mine  why  that  fear  had  left  him  and  what  was  the  connection 
between  its  departure  and  his  visit  to  Domremy,  yet  he  fell 
fast  asleep  almost  as  soon  as  he  lay  down. 

When  his  eyes  opened,  a  glance  at  the  phosphorescent  face 
of  his  wrist-watch  told  him  that  time  had  passed  into  those 
still  hours  of  the  earliest  morning  when  reason  is  in  abeyance 
and  the  primitive  susceptibilities  and  sensitiveness  inherited 
from  our  earliest  forefathers  come  again  to  life  and  power. 
Outside  there  was  still  the  muffled  roll  of  camions;  inside, 
as  if  fanned  by  the  loud  breathing  of  the  soldiers,  the  blue 
flicker  bf  the  odorous  lantern  fell  on  rifle-barrels  at  bed-heads 
and  made  them  move  until  they  seemed  to  be  shedding  streams 
of  blood  that  ran  down  to  the  figures  of  his  comrades  couched 
beneath  them. 

To  right  and  left,  from  shadow  into  shadow,  those  figures 
lay  in  all  the  grotesque  poses  of  the  infinitely  weary,  like* 
drunkards  whose  potations  have  suddenly  overcome  them. 
Now  and  then  one  tossed  and  mumbled  in  his  sleep,  or  ad 
dressed  somebody  that  was  far  away,  or  cried  out  as  if  in 
helpless  terror  of  something  that  was  drawing  near.  Those 
faces  which  were  visible  were  as  the  livid  faces  of  children 
suffering  from  a  wasting  disease;  all  coarseness  had  gone 
from  them,  all  the  years  and  the  contamination  of  the  years : 
they  were  very  like  children  that  are  ill  and  know  that  they 
are  ill. 

Andy  thought  of  Sylvia :  he  told  himself  that  he  had  been 


318  VICTOKIOUS 

selfish  in  his  love  for  her  and  that  his  demands  exceeded  his 
deserts:  he  would  keep  his  ideal,  but  he  would  be  friends 
with  Sylvia  and  he  would  never  be  selfish  in  his  dealings  with 
anybody  again.  He  thought  about  his  mother,  and  planned 
to  make  her  happier  on  his  return.  About  Blunston,  and 
how  much  he  owed  him;  about  Americus,  and  the  woods 
where  the  waxen  flowers  of  the  May-apple  would  soon  be 
blooming,  and  about  Colonel  Eskessen  and  Mr.  Dickey,  and 
even,  kindly,  about  Minnie  Taylor  and  all  his  friends  in  the 
lovable  town.  And  then  he  thought  of  the  bare  little  room 
in  which,  that  very  afternoon,  he  had  felt  like  falling  on  his 
knees,  and  about  her  that  once  prayed  there. 

Andy  prayed.   .   .   . 

Somehow,  that  made  him  understand  these  uncouth  men 
who  lay  snoring  around  him.  He  saw,  behind  all  their  ri 
baldry,  how  fine  and  brave  and  generous  their  spirits  were, 
and  how  the  worst  that  they  showed  of  themselves  was  no 
more  than  a  screen  raised  by  them  to  protect  an  ideal  too 
dear  for  vulgar  display.  They  were  not  here  out  of  adven 
ture,  nor  yet,  these  conscripts,  merely  from  compulsion;  one 
and  all,  they  knew  in  their  laughing  but  stern  souls  the  tragic 
greatness  of  their  task:  they  had  come,  though  they  had  to 
come,  willingly,  to  fight  for  democracy.  Their  loud  com 
plaints  were  in  reality  only  complaints  against  impious  dese 
crations  of  the  cause  and  deadly  delays  in  the  sacrifice.  Un 
der  the  assumed  coarseness  of  the  hooligan,  Andy  was  reading 
the  epic  of  the  hero. 

And  he  was  one  of  them — oh,  not  a  hero ;  but  a  participant 
in  the  common  endeavor.  That  obliteration  of  the  individual 
of  which  one  of  them  had  pretended  to  grumble :  it  was  what 
he  had  needed.  He  was  become  a  glad  atom  in  a  splendid 
body.  He  shed  his  troubles :  rather  they  were  shed  from  him 
— he  had  forgotten  how  to  be  afraid,  even  of  fear.  The  Dream 
had  never  gone  away;  now  it  drew  near;  the  Cause  was 
greater  than  the  sum  of  its  mistakes: 

"Thy  Kingdom  come,"  prayed  Andy. 

He  had  triumphed  over  himself:  so  would  Democracy  tri 
umph  over  all  her  enemies. 


VICTORIOUS  319 

XIX 

The  next  morning  they  told  him  that  Lieutenant  Wilson 
had  been  transferred  and  that  his  place  was  to  be  taken  by  a 
Lieutenant  Garcia.  But  Andy  was  indifferent :  Sergeant  Ryan 
had  grudgingly  confessed  that  he  might  become  a  soldier 
after  all. 

The  endless  train  of  camions  passing  along  the  village- 
street  had  changed  its  direction,  had  become  another  sort  of 
train ;  its  trucks,  too,  were  gray  and  traveled  slowly,  but  each 
of  them  bore  a  red  cross  on  its  side,  and  sometimes  some 
thing  crimson  ran  out  of  them  and  left  little  black  spots  on 
the  white  road — and  sometimes  he  could  catch  a  glimpse  of 
the  inside  of  these  French  ambulances.  But  Andy  only  prayed 
the  harder: 

"Thy  Kingdom  come." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

SARAH  BROWN  HEARS  NEWS  OF  HERSELF  AND  OF  HER  SON 

AMERICUS  lay  quiet  under  the  spring  sunshine.  In  the 
larger  cities,  there  was  some  unrest;  talk  of  a  vague  exotic 
called  Bolshevism  was  heard  there,  and  there  were  meetings 
at  which  men  of  strange  names  addressed  men  and  women  of 
foreign  birth  and  spoke  of  setting  the  world  right  in  a  day  by 
setting  it  free  of  all  the  habits  of  thought  to  which  it  had 
grown  accustomed;  but  elsewhere,  on  farms  where  the  tillers 
were  making  fortunes  from  high  food-prices,  in  death-produc 
ing  mills  of  toadstool  growth  wherein  the  toilers  received  large 
pay  that  they  could  not  save,  labor,  at  least,  was  more  than 
content :  it  was  jubilant.  The  thought  that  the  costs,  which 
were  always  raised  a  little  while  after  the  wages,  must  some 
time  remain  after  the  wages  declined,  occurred  to  few.  The 
people  at  large,  and  especially  such  towns  as  Americus,  were 
doing  well. 

Miss  Hattie  Lloyd's  sharp  red  nose  and  sharp  white  chin 
went  poking  into  each  home;  whenever  bad  news  was  re 
ceived,  she  was  the  first  to  know  it  outside  of  the  family  im 
mediately  affected.  Industrial  contentment  did  not  interest 
her,  and  she  only  hugged  herself  the  tighter  under  the  spring 
time  sun. 

To-day  she  passed  Mr.  Dickey  on  the  corner — "Not  doin' 
s'well  as  he  might,"  she  reflected — and  hugged  her  way  into 
the  Red  Cross  rooms  in  the  Tidd  house.  There  were  a  great 
many  uniformed  women  there,  who  looked  up  in  surprise  at 
this  unusual  visitor. 

Young  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  bounced  from  among  them. 

"Miss  Hattie/'  she  said,  "you  can't  come  in  unless  you  get 
a  uniform.  We'll  be  glad  to  have  you  work  here,  but  you've 
got  to  wear  a  uniform.  Those  are  the  rules  from  national 

320 


VICTORIOUS  321 

headquarters,  and  national  headquarters  are  a  branch  of  the 
United  States  Government,  and  so  are  we." 

"Thanks,"  said  Miss  Hattie ;  "I  only  came  to  give  you  these 
socks."  From  beneath  her  shawl,  she  forthwith  produced  a 
pair,  which  Mrs.  Ralph  accepted.  "I  guess  you've  got  enough 
help  without  me,"  she  concluded. 

"We  need  all  we  can  get,"  said  Mrs.  Ralph.  She  spoke  for 
the  benefit  of  Minnie  Taylor  and  her  other  deferential  abigails, 
who  were  gathered  round  her  so  as  to  lose  no  word  she  uttered. 

Miss  Hattie  cocked  her  head.  "Then  why  don't  you  bring 
Sarah  Brown  here,  Mrs.  Bolingbroke?  She's  got  a  boy  over 
there,  and  she's  never  done  a  bit  of  work  for  the  Red  Cross, 
s'far's  I  can  hear." 

Mrs.  Bolingbroke  looked  at  her  visitor  with  quick  suspicion. 
Caution  advised  silence,  or  at  most  evasion ;  but  the  demand  of 
discipline  over  the  surrounding  lesser  workers  was  paramount. 

"I  guess  Mrs.  Brown'd  help,"  said  she,  "if  she  wanted  to 
— and  if  she  doesn't  want  to,  she's  a  slacker." 

Miss  Hattie  gave  herself  a  delighted  squeeze.  "Maybe  she 
has  some  other  reason." 

Minnie  Taylor  giggled.  She  giggled  out  of  sheer  excite^- 
ment,  but  the  thought  that  Sarah  might  have  talked  of  her 
visit  to  the  Red  Cross  rooms  and  of  what  had  happened  there 
set  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  aflame. 

"Did  Sarah  Brown  tell  you  anything  about  me?"  she 
demanded.  "Because  if  she  did,  she  lied !" 

"Mercy  me !"  cried  Miss  Hattie.  "I  didn't  know  I  was  stir 
ring  up  a  hornet's  nest.  Sarah  tell  me  anything?  What 
about,  Mrs.  Bolingbroke?" 

"Never  mind  what !"  Mrs.  Ralph  saw  that  she  had  walked 
into  a  trap.  <rWhat  you  don't  know  can't  hurt  you.  Now 
then,  Miss  Hattie,  we're  much  obliged  to  you  for  these  socks, 
but  we've  got  to  get  back  to  work.  Come  on,  girls." 

II 

Miss  Hattie  walked  directly  to  Blunston,  whom  she  found 
at  his  old  house,  on  the  back-porch  that  used  to  be  a  front  one. 
He  rose  at  her  coming,  rather  bewilderedly. 


323  VICTORIOUS 

"Here's  a  red-winged  blackbird  .  .  ."  he  began.  He  indi 
cated  the  end  of  the  big  yard.  "I  was  just  watching  .  .  ." 
•To  himself  he  was  saying :  "Miss  Hattie !  Who  next  ?" 

"Good  morning,  Andrew,"  said  Miss  Hattie.  "No  thanks, 
I  won't  sit  down." — He  had  not  offered  her  a  chair. 

"Yesterday,"  he  said,  "I  thought  I  saw  an  indigo-bunting, 
but  it's  early  for.  .  .  ." 

"I  came  to  see  you  about  Sarah  Brown,"  said  Miss  Hattie. 

"Mrs.  Brown?    .    .    .    Me?"  Really! 

"Yes."  She  told  him  something  of  her  suspicions :  she  had 
a  compelling  way  of  presenting  suspicions;  she  had  practice. 
"It's  my  idea,"  she  concluded,  "the  Tollens  pride's  gone  a  lit 
tle  too  far  this  time.  Sarah's  just  cheating  herself  out  of 
money  she  needs.  I'm  sure  she  needs  it.  I  want  you  to  go 
with  me  to  see  her.  I  want  a  witness." 

Blunston  attempted  remonstrance. 

"If  you  don't  go  with  me,  I'll  have  to  go  alone,"  said  Miss 
Hattie.  "For  I  will  go." 

So  she  captured  him.  Blunston  represented  to  himself  that 
he  accompanied  her  in  order  to  make  the  interview  easier  for 
Sarah. 

ill 

Whether  he  succeeded  is  doubtful.  Andy's  mother  received 
them  in  her  parlor  with  its  marble-top  center-table,  its  photo 
graphs  of  Andy  as  a  baby  and  Andy  in  uniform,  and  seated 
them  in  chairs  that  were  relics  of  the  Tollens'  departed  glory. 
She  had  slipped  off  her  apron,  but  there  were  bright  smudges 
on  her  black  sleeves:  she  had  been  regilding,  with  Andy's 
paints  from  up-stairs,  the  chandelier  that  Andy  always  liked 
to  keep  bright. 

Blunston  made  a  timid  beginning,  but  Miss  Hattie  cut  him 
short.  She  repeated  her  recent  conversation  with  Mrs.  Ralph. 

Sarah  turned  pale.    "What  else  did  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  say  ?" 

"Besides  calling  you  a  slacker  and  a  liar?  What  more  do 
you  want,  Sarah?" 

"I  don't  think  Mrs.  Bolingbroke  has  a  right  to  talk  about 
me/' 


VICTORIOUS  323 

"Certainly,"  Blunston  hurriedly  agreed.  "Only  of  course 
we  ought  to  remember,  she  really  does  a  lot  of  good  and  so  on 
and.  .  .  ." 

"She  always  lets  the  whole  town  know  it  when  she  does  do 
good,"  sniffed  Miss  Hattie.  "What  was  it  she  thought  you'd 
told,  Sarah?" 

Sarah  compressed  her  lips  and  did  not  answer. 

Blunston  made  a  restless  movement.  He  felt  absurdly 
placed:  "But,  Miss  Hattie.  .  .  ." 

"I've  come  here  to  tell  Sarah  something  for  her  own  good, 
and  I  mean  to  do  it.  Sarah,  I  happened  to  be  in  Doncaster 
a  while  ago,  and  I  went  to  the  court-house.  It  was  something 
about  deeds.  How  did  your  poor  father  come  to  lose  that 
Tidd  place?" 

Sarah  stood  up.  "I  can't  talk  about  that."  Her  face  was 
very  firm.  "I'm  surprised  you  asked  me." 

"But,  Sarah—" 

"Yes,  you  think  it's  for  my  own  good,  I  know.  I'm  the 
best  judge  of  what's  good  for  me.  I  can't  talk  about  it,  and 
I  won't." 

Miss  Hattie  made  remonstrances,  she  made  fresh  begin 
nings  ;  but  Sarah  always  blocked  her  before  she  ever  made,  in 
full,  a  complete  statement  of  the  case.  Moreover,  Andy's 
mother  had  Blunston  as  an  ally;  he  came  out  of  his  distress 
definitely  to  side  with  her  against  the  probing  of  what  he  con 
ceived  a  secret  wound.  In  the  end,  Miss  Hattie  had  to  go 
away  unsatisfied. 

On  the  door-step,  she  turned  on  him. 

"There's  something  very  queer.  I  can  tell  that  by  Sarah's 
not  letting  me  talk.  She's  a  perfect  fool — and  you're  a  per 
fect  fool,  too !" 

Blunston  was  glad  to  be  rid  of  her.  He  walked  alone  down 
Elm  Avenue.  As  he  passed  the  telegraph-office,  the  operator 
came  to  the  door  and  called  to  him : 

"Cable  for  you,  Mr.  Blunston.  I  was  just  going  to  send  it 
down." 

Blunston  opened  the  proffered  envelope : 


VICTORIOUS 

"Bond  declared  forfeit  have  insured  life  to  protect  make 
it  easy  but  tell  mother  have  enlisted." 

IY 

Minnie,  released  from  her  lahors  for  the  Eed  Cross,  un 
dulated  upon  him  as  he  stood  there  with  the  bit  of  yellow 
paper  in  his  trembling  hand. 

"Good  morning,  Mr.  Blunston,"  she  dimpled.  "Any  news 
from  Andy?" 

Blunston's  fist  closed  on  the  cable-message. 

"No,"  he  said;  "no  news." 

Whenever  they  thus  met,  Minnie,  on  the  strength  of  her 
single  call  at  the  Blunston  house,  had  been  treating  him  as  a 
privileged  friend. 

"We  don't  hear  much  from  our  boys,"  she  said,  "and  I  guess 
we  never  will  hear  much  good  of  some  of  them." — It  was  only 
the  other  day  she  had  had  her  disconcerting  morning  with 
Chrissly. — "You  remember  the  parade  and  all  for  that  Shu- 
man  fellow.  Well,  I  hear  he's  a  case.  I  never  could  see  why 
we  made  such  a  fuss  over  just  a  private  soldier,  anyhow." 

Blunston's  grave  eyes  were  fixed  on  something  far  off. 

"You  couldn't?"  he  said. 

"No;  and  to  hear  him  go  on,  you'd  think  nobody  but  the 
soldiers  were  helping  win  the  war.  He  starts  back  to-day. 
I  don't  know  a  girl  that's  not  in  the  Eed  Cross,  or  the  Emer 
gency  Aid,  or  something.  Between  you  and  I,  Mr.  Blunston, 
some  soldiers  make  me  tired." 

"Soldiers  .  .  .,"  said  Blunston.  The  sign  that  hung  in 
front  of  the  Philadelphia  Shoe  Store  needed  repainting:  this 
was  the  first  time  he  had  noticed  it. 

"Everybody  goes  on  about  soldiers,  no  matter  what  sort  of 
family  they  come  from,  like  they  were  just  grand.  I'm  sure 
the  army  wasn't  so  nice  to  General  Wood.  I  hate  the  old  war ! 
What  do  you  hear  from  Andy,  Mr.  Blunston?" 

Her  second  mention  of  the  boy's  name  pulled  him  up.  "Not 
much,  Miss  Ta}dor ;  not  a  great    .    .    ." 
<     He  raised  his  hat  and  was  off. 


YICTORIOUS  325 

Minnie  stared  after  him. 

/'  she  said,  "he's  turned  back  the  way  he  came  I" 


Blunston's  walk  was  long,  but  he  knew  that  it  could  have 
only  one  ending.  After  an  hour's  tramping  on  back  streets, 
he  returned  to  Elm  Avenue,  made  a  purchase  at  the  Racket 
Store  and  then  went  back,  with  his  wrapped  purchase  in  his 
hand,  to  "the  Brown  house."  While  he  waited  for  Sarah  to 
answer  his  summons,  he  saw  a  three-star  service-flag  in  the 
window  of  a  small  house  opposite  and,  under  the  flag,  the  rest 
of  its  story,  a  sign  :  "For  Kent." 

"Drew  ?"   Sarah  was  startled  at  his  reappearance. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I'm  here  again.    May  I    .    .    ." 

She  took  him  into  the  parlor.    Neither  sat  down. 

"I'm  sorry  Miss  Hattie  had  to    .    .    ." 

"You  didn't  come  here  to  talk  about  Miss  Hattie,"  said 
Sarah. 

"No.    I  —  I  have  some  news.    .    .    ." 

He  handed  her  the  parcel.  She  unfastened  it;  her  fingers 
calmly  mastered  its  knots.  She  unfolded  a  silk  service-flag 
that  bore  a  single  star. 

A  faint  touch  of  color  came  into  her  sallow  cheeks.  Her  lips 
tightened  as  they  had  tightened  under  Miss  Hattie's  question 
ing.  But  all  that  she  said  was  : 

"He's  enlisted  r 

Blunston  bowed. 

"When?" 

"I  got  a  cable.  ...  It  was  late  —  about  five  days."  He 
caught  something  in  her  face.  "But  that's  all  it  means  :  en 
listment.  He'll  have  weeks  and  weeks  of  training.  ...  It 
was  splendid  of  him.  I  know  just  how  he  felt."  The  old 
longing  beat  over  the  iron-gray  head  of  the  former  war-corre 
spondent.  "How  I  wish  I  was  there  !" 

"If  it  was  right,"  said  Sarah,  "I'm  glad." 

"Oh,  it  was  !  We  need  every  man." 

"There  was  something  the  matter  with  his  heart  once." 


32G  VICTOKIOUS 

"That  must  be  all  right  now.  There's  the  same  medical- 
examination  there.  .  .  .  He'll  come  back  .  .  ." 

It  was  as  if,  by  doing  the  braver  thing,  Andy  had  done  that 
which  would  remove  the  danger  she  once  voiced:  there  was 
quick  flame  in  the  glance  she  flung  at  Blunston :  "Of  course 
he'll  come  back !" 

".  .  .  stronger  than  ever/'  Blunston  concluded.  She  had 
always  understood  his  ellipses ;  that  she  failed  this  once  showed 
an  emotion  nothing  else  betrayed. 

"The  war  will  be  over  before  August,"  said  Sarah.  Her  will 
to  end  it  rang  in  her  voice. 

Blunston  took  her  hard  hand.  He  saw  for  the  hundredth 
time  how  the  years  had  changed  her,  but  he  saw,  crowning  her 
care  and  her  weariness,  a  coronet  of  nobility,  the  mask  of 
that  hardest  conquest,  the  conquest  of  deserved  adversity. 
What  she  saw  was  a  man  now  visibly  past  the  height  of  his 
powers,  a  man  to-day  beginning  the  descent  of  the  hill — and, 
for  the  first  time,  she  saw,  at  this  long  last,  just  what  his  sac 
rifice  had  been;  what  his  ambition  and  his  triumph  over  it; 
what,  in  a  word,  he  had  done  for  her  boy.  There  could  be  no 
thought  of  love  between  them,  but  there  and  then  from  that 
handclasp  was  born  to  them  something  that,  in  no  small  sense, 
was  finer. 

"You'd  better  go  now,"  said  Sarah. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I'd  better  go." 

She  went  with  him  to  the  door. 

"I  know,"  he  said,  "why  you  called  him  'Andrew.'  It  was 
good.  .  .  ." 

"I  never  called  him  'Drew,' "  she  said. 

VI 

She  hung  the  silk  flag  in  the  window,  and  the  news  spread 
all  over  town,  and  Andy  was  a  hero  again,  and  his  mother 
again  received  light  from  his  glory.  "Babe"  Campbell  con 
gratulated  her ;  everybody  congratulated  her ;  for  two  evenings, 
her  progress  along  Elm  Avenue  was  triumphal  and,  though 
she  appeared  not  to  care — appeared  all  along  to  have  expected 


VICTORIOUS  327 

her  son's  enlistment — she  walked  with  such  a  carriage  that 
Lawyer  Dickey  said  she  was  recovering  the  Sarah  Tollens  of 
her  youth.  Doctor  Dawson,  who  nowadays  gave  new  solemnity 
to  the  ninth  petition  of  the  Litany,  came  to  call  on  her  and 
asked  her  if  she  wouldn't  return  to  St.  Paul's  now  that  Andy's 
name  had  an  undisputed  right  on  its  Eoll  of  Honor,  though  he, 
for  one,  had  never  doubted  its  undisputed  right  there — and 
whether  she  wouldn't,  please,  enter  the  Red  Cross. 

"Perhaps  I'll  come  to  church,  after  a  while,"  said  Sarah; 
"but  I  won't  join  that  club  of  Mrs.  Bolingbroke's." 

Far  off  she  saw  a  stretch  of  land  beaten  hard  and  torn  and 
torn  again.  She  could  smell  the  black  smoke  that  hung  over 
it.  She  could  see  the  lurid  spurt  of  flame  that  clove  the  smoke 
and  hear  the  scream  of  the  shells.  There  were  men  there,  men 
in  dirty  uniforms,  men  lunging  at  one  another  with  gleam 
ing  bayonets,  madmen  bleeding.  .  .  . 

"I  don't  know  just  what  to  say  to  you,"  she  wrote  Andy  in 
a  labored  letter  that  the  military  post  promptly  lost;  "except 
that  I'm  glad  you've  done  it,  if  what  you've  done  is  what  you 
think  is  right.  I  want  you  to  do  your  duty,  Andy.  Be  sure 
you  keep  on  doing  it  now;  but  I  know  my  boy  always  will. 
I'll  be  all  right.  You  mustn't  worry  about  me.  I'm  glad 
you've  done  what  you  think  is  right.  God  bless  you.* 

As  she  posted  this  note,  she  said  to  herself : 
"I  bore  him.    And  I  sent  him,  too :  if  I'd  have  asked  him 
not  to  go  in  the  first  place,  my  red-headed  boy'd  have  stayed 
at  home  with  me.    I  sent  him.    I'm  proud  of  that. — And  so 
far,  this  time,  I  haven't  cried." 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

IN  WHICH 

THE  shrill  notes  of  the  reveille  shattered  the  heavy  dark 
ness  that  precedes  the  dawn.  Lights  appeared  in  the  village ; 
hob-nailed  boots  clattered  on  the  cobblestones.  There  was 
the  hoarse  shouting  of  orders,  and  the  forms  of  many  men, 
blurred  by  the  night  and  awkward  from  sleep  and  cold,  began 
to  come  out  of  houses  and  barns  and  to  draw  together  in  the 
street.  "Word  jumped  from  mouth  to  mouth  among  the  sol 
diers  that  they  were  going  into  trenches  to  relieve  a  seasoned 
division  for  the  open  fighting  in  the  north. 

"Just  like  the  brass-hats  to  send  us  where  it's  qu-quiet," 
Winters  grumbled  between  his  chattering  teeth.  "They  cer 
tainly  have  it  in  for  us  I" 

"Shut  up !"  said  Flynn.  "It's  a  shot  at  the  Heinies,  any 
ways.  Can't  ye  be  t'ankf ul  for  small  mercies  ?" 

Andy  found  his  place  in  the  rear  rank  between  Chrissly  and 
Campbell.  The  light  of  Ryan's  flash-lamp  showed  him  Levy, 
Davies  and  Johnson.  Down  the  line,  it  fell  successively  on 
Schwartz  and  Christopoulos,  Kozloff  and  Ibrahim  Reshid, 
the  Turk,  and  on  smiling  Angelelli.  He  had  a  glimpse  of 
Garcia's  face,  very  white,  and  of  Lieutenant  Graaberg  receiv 
ing  some  rapid  instructions  from  their  battery  captain. 

The  time  had  come,  and  he  was  ready  for  it. 

Every  man  had  his  kit  with  him,  but  there  was  no  inspec 
tion.  As  soon  as  the  reports  were  made,  a  repeated  order  rat 
tled  along  the  ranks,  and  while  it  was  yet  dark  they  had  be 
gun  their  march. 

II 

In  the  first  light  of  the  morning,  they  passed  other  regi 
ments,  lying  on  the  wet  grass  behind  stacked  rifles  and  waiting 
for  Andy's  regiment  to  precede  them. 

328 


VICTORIOUS  329 

Davies  would  call  out :  "You've  got  to  make  room  for  us !" 

"  'Take  a  look  at  me  now !' "  cried  Campbell. 

And  once,  one  of  the  men  on  the  grass  retorted :  "Sure ! 
We  won't  get  another  chance." 

Everybody  that  heard  him  laughed. 

"You're  the  — th,  ain't  you  ?"  somebody  inquired. 

Andy  nodded. 

"I  thought  so:  your  colonel  dropped  his  pet  louse,  and  it's 
green." 

"Oh,  well,"  shouted  Flynn,  "we  knew  who  you  was  by  the 
smell  of  yez." 

They  passed  ambulances  and  some  artillery,  the  guns  har- 
lequinading  in  yellow,  green  and  brown.  They  passed  a  mile 
of  wagons.  The  men  were  overladen;  besides,  it  had  rained 
yesterday,  and  there  were  many  pounds  of  water  in  their  uni 
forms  and  boots.  Before  they  had  made  their  second  rest,  and 
scarcely  ten  minutes  after  they  were  in  their  proper  place  in 
the  line,  Winters  was  complaining  that  he  had  come  to  France 
to  fight  and  not  to  be  walked  to  death. 

They  knew  the  villages  they  came  to  by  the  plaque  on  the 
first  house  of  each.  Sometimes  French  soldiers  cheered  them, 
and  girls  waved  in  hysterical  gaiety.  One  that  tried  to  run 
upon  Andy's  squad,  throwing  kisses,  Johnson,  the  cross-eyed 
corporal,  shoved  backward  so  roughly  that  she  fell :  Andy's 
last  sight  of  her  showed  her  on  her  knees,  her  lips  stiffened  in 
their  greeting.  Outside  of  that  village  they  cheered  an  am 
bulance  that  was  driven  by  a  pretty  Englishwoman  in  V.  A. 
D.  blue.  .  .  . 

in 

They  crossed  at  last  the  borders  of  desolation.  Here  was 
a  house  the  front  of  which  had  been  blown  away:  the  table 
was  still  set,  in  the  dining-room ;  up-stairs  the  beds  were  wait 
ing.  There  was  a  main  street  without  so  much  as  one  of  the 
dogs  that  used  to  frequent  it;  the  grass  was  growing  between 
the  cracks  in  the  paving.  The  roof,  floor  and  furniture  of  an 
old  church  were  dumped  into  its  crypt,  and  the  graves,  blasted 
open,  exposed  to  this  twentieth-century  war  the  whitened 


330  VICTORIOUS 

skulls  of  peaceful  priests,  which  had  lain  in  quiet  and  dark 
ness  for  hundreds  of  years.  In  the  largest  town  along  their 
route,  only  ten  out  of  five  hundred  houses  remained  untorn 
by  shells,  and  every  house  that  had  been  hit  was  uninhabitable. 
The  next  place  was  a  mere  dust-heap  wherefrom,  knee-deep  in 
debris,  sallow  Asiatics  raked  together  bits  of  brass  and  iron  and 
collected  the  leaden  house-numbers  for  conversion  into  ma 
terials  of  war. 

After  that  the  countryside  was  a  plain  of  pulverized  stone, 
gashed  hunks  of  concrete,  acres  of  deserted  trenches  and  rusted 
labyrinths  of  barbed  wire.  Scarcely  ruin  remained.  Empty 
dug-outs,  yawning  mine-craters,  deep  shell-holes,  but  not  a 
house,  not  a  tree.  The  very  course  of  streams  had  been  visibly 
altered,  villages  were  only  names  on  the  officers'  maps. 

A  dog-cart  stood  by  the  road  and  near  it  three  people  in 
civilian  clothes.  One  of  the  two  men  might  be  a  small-town 
doctor,  the  other  had  patently  been  bred  to  the  law,  the 
woman — .  Why,  she  was  just  a  girl,  just  a  girl  of  eighteen 
or  nineteen — and  though  Andy  had  already  seen  something 
of  grief  in  this  war,  he  had  never  seen  a  face  on  which  such 
grief  was  written.  It  was  written  so  plainly  that,  taken  into 
consideration  with  the  scene  and  its  other  actors,  the  meaning 
of  the  little  tragedy  was  clear :  the  last  of  her  family,  this  girl 
must  have  lived  here  all  her  life  until  the  days  of  the  invasion ; 
she  had  now  returned  to  find  her  home,  and  she  could  not  even 
pick  out  the  spot  where  the  house  once  stood. 

IV 

To  Andy  it  seemed  a  matter  of  months,  that  journey  to  the 
trenches.  The  long  column  had  been  broken  and  rejoined  and 
broken  again,  and  marching  was  but  one  factor  in  its  prog 
ress.  The  end  came,  however,  and  came,  for  Andy's  unit, 
amid  a  roar  of  cannon,  with  a  sudden  turn  to  the  left  out  of 
a  shell-pitted  road  in  the  twilight  of  a  long  day.  Captain 
Bates  said  something  to  Kyan ;  Ryan  passed  this  word  to  the 
corporal,  and  cross-eyed  Johnson  told  his  squad : 


VICTORIOUS  331 

"Cut  out  the  gab  an'  keep  your  heads  down,  or  you'll  be 
pushing  up  the  daisies  to-morrow." 

The  last  sight  that  Andy  had  of  the  outside  world  included 
a  battery  of  artillery  swinging  into  the  fields  beside  him,  the 
guns  followed  by  their  caissons,  each  driver  mounted  and  hold 
ing  the  bridle  of  an  off -horse.  Near  by  a  medical-unit  was  con 
verting  a  rough  shed  into  a  hospital;  orderlies,  beside  huge 
pots  of  boiling  water  over  the  blazing  fires,  were  laying  on 
a  clean  table  a  brilliant  battalion  of  forceps,  scissors  and  saws, 
while  around  them  other  orderlies  busily  unpacked  chests  of 
lint,  compresses  and  bandages.  The  noise  of  the  guns  oblit 
erated  sound,  and  it  was  strange  to  see  all  these  preparations 
going  on  in  seeming  silence. 

"There's  our  general,"  said  Winters,  much  as  he  had  said 
it  in  camp,  and  Andy  saw  the  overcoated,  soldierly  form  stand 
ing  by  an  old  shell-crater  as  the  company  went  past.  The  next 
moment  he  was  in  a  gulley  and  slopping  through  the  earth. 

They  had  a  mile  and  a  half  to  go,  at  long  "distances"  and 
in  single  file,  before  they  reached  the  third  line,  and  then  a 
thousand  yards  to  the  firing-line.  On  the  way,  they  passed 
scores  of  openings  into  other  trenches,  and  the  only  assurance 
that  they  would  not  be  lost  was  the  presence  of  a  guide  from 
the  unit  they  were  relieving,  who  led  the  way. 

If  Andy  had  any  fear,  it  was  that  he  might  be  killed  in 
some  trivial  manner  before  the  hour  for  fighting  arrived.  He 
obeyed  orders,  therefore,  so  long  as  his  youthful  curiosity  per 
mitted  ;  but  there  came  moments  when  he  could  no  more  re 
strain  himself,  and  when  he  would  rise  tiptoe  and,  without 
pausing  in  his  journey,  look  over  the  top  of  the  communica 
tion-trench.  On  such  occasions  he  was  rewarded  by  nothing 
except  the  sight  of  a  vast  wasteland  from  which  houses,  trees 
and  hedges  had  all  been  wiped  away  and  the  surface  of  which 
shells  had  churned  and  churned  again. 

Horses  rotted  in  rain-pools  among  broken  wagon-wheels 
and  the  scraps  of  shattered  camions,  but  the  first  dead  man 
that  Andy  saw  lay  on  the  sodden  earth  close  to  the  trench's 
edge  with  a  flatness  that  at  once  announced  his  final  condi- 


332  VICTORIOUS 

tion ;  a  rat  was  gnawing  his  cheek  and  looked  at  the  passers-by 
without  discontinuing  his  horrible  repast.  Andy,  like  his  com 
panions,  was  proceeding  with  his  arms  free,  his  rifle  being  sus 
pended  by  its  strap  from  his  shoulders,  his  arms  poised  to  pro 
tect  him  against  a  fall:  once  he  slipped,  and  his  left  hand, 
flung  over  the  top,  clutched  something  that  admitted  his  fin 
ger-tips  as  if  it  were  jelly;  when  he  recovered  his  footing,  he 
saw  that  this  something  was  the  decaying  face  of  what  had 
been  a  French  soldier. 

v 

"Here's  where  we  live,"  said  Chrissly. 

It  was  a  slimy  ditch.  Andy's  feet  sank  into  sucking  muck. 
Because  men  had  inhabited  the  trench  as  the  animals  of  a 
menagerie  inhabit  their  cages,  to  enter  this  place  was  to  force 
one's  way  through  a  stench  almost  tangible.  It  was  just  such 
a  trench  as  that  which  he  had  visited  in  those  prehistoric  times 
when  he  was  a  war-correspondent.  It  reeked  of  death. 

Instinctively  trying  not  to  lean  against  the  revetment,  try 
ing  to  avoid  all  contact  with  the  contaminated  walls,  Andy 
looked  about  him.  Chrissly  was  already  seated  on  a  more  or 
less  dry  bit  of  board,  his  helmeted  head  resting  against  the 
oozing  earth,  the  chunks  of  mud  that  were  his  boots  propped 
upon  the  planks  that,  half  afloat,  were  intended  for  a  foot 
way;  Levy  was  volubly  explaining  the  system  of  the  trenches, 
about  which  he  knew  nothing ;  big  Davies  and  Winter  and  the 
other  men  of  the  squad  were  gazing  around  them  with  conster 
nation;  Johnson  stood  by  uncertainly,  awaiting  orders. 

Andy  mounted  the  firing-step.  He  peeped  out  at  a  black 
ened  ash-heap  cluttered  with  broken  things  and  deformed, 
which  lay  drenched  and  water-logged.  Above,  the  shells 
roared;  from  below  rose  heavily  the  odor  of  human  flesh  in 
all  the  stages  of  putrefaction. 

"You  damn  fool,  keep  your  head  down!"  Johnson  warned. 

Chrissly  touched  Andy  on  the  shoulder  and  pointed  to  a 
hole,  the  mouth  of  a  tiny  cave  scooped  under  the  forward  wall 
of  the  trench : 

"And  here's  where  we  sleep,"  he  said. 


VICTOEIOUS  333 


VI 

Well,  here  he  was.  It  surprised  "Andy  a  little  at  first  to  see 
red  flashes  from  across  the  ash-heap  and  farther  tip  the  line 
and  to  realize  that  fighting  was  going  on  there  while,  for  all 
the  hideousness  of  his  part  of  the  trenches,  he  and  his  comrades 
were  in  comparative  quiet :  the  subjection  of  his  individuality, 
which  was  really  its  extension  to  include  his  regiment,  his 
division,  had  not  yet  progressed,  though  it  soon  did  so,  to  the 
point  where  it  would  include  a  still  larger  force.  Nevertheless, 
what  was  about  him  was  sufficiently  grizzly,  its  potentialities 
sufficiently  imminent.  This  was  not  the  flag-flung,  drum- 
beating  war  of  which  he  used  to  read ;  it  was  an  unbelievable 
intensification  of  the  war  of  which  he  had  once  tried  to  write ; 
it  embraced  such  chances  as  crouching  in  muck  until  a  mean 
ingless  piece  of  shell  carried  off  one's  nose,  blew  one's  face 
away,  left  one  alive  and  a  shape  of  repulsion. 

He  had  wondered  what  ugly  shape  the  German  soldiers 
would  assume  when  he  saw  them.  Now  he  wondered  if  he 
would  ever  see  a  German  soldier.  He  devoutly  prayed  that, 
if  he  did,  the  man  would  not  cry  "Kamerad"  when  there  were 
orders  to  take  no  prisoners. 

But  he  knew  that  he  would  never  be  afraid  again. 

VII 

He  had  been  there  an  entire  day  before  he  had  familiarized 
himself  with  the  maze  of  the  trenches,  for  they  were  a  stink 
ing  warren  of  which  every  part  was  like  every  other,  and  he 
argued  with  Flynn  that  a  man  would  be  a  fool  to  try  to  run 
away  in  them,  because  no  man  could  tell  whether  he  were  going 
forward  or  back.  Their  former  occupants  had  given  them- 
names,  and  to  the  communication-trenches  these  held,  but 
those  of  the  front  line  proper  were  numbered,  in  that  sector, 
from  left  to  right.  The  duty  of  the  occupants,  who  were  di 
vided  into  shifts,  was  to  remain  on  watch,  to  report  any  suspi 
cious  movement  observed  in  No  Man's  Land  and  to  pick  off 
any  head  that  showed  itself  above  the  opposite  mole-ridges 
that  were  the  works  of  the  enemy. 


334  VICTORIOUS 

The  quarters  were  close.  Whenever  anybody  passed,  the 
men,  unless  congregated  in  an  "elbow/'  had  to  press  them 
selves  tight  against  the  revetments  to  make  way  for  him,  and 
this  enforced  propinquity  led  to  frequent  quarrels.  If  a  sol 
dier  broke  his  watch,  he  would  nearly  cry  over  the  accident 
and  then  loudly  blame  his  neighbor.  Just  beyond  the  far  edge 
of  the  pit,  a  dead  man  lay,  and  there  was  a  long  squabble  as 
to  whether  the  body  should  be  dragged  in  and  buried  and  if 
so  whose  duty  it  was ;  when  Andy  volunteered,  the  arm  of  the 
corpse  came  off  as  he  pulled  at  it. 

Dawn  always  appeared  grudgingly,  as  if  dreading  the  sure 
renewal  of  the  titanic  noises  that  used  to  cease  to  a  porten 
tous  silence  for  an  interval  beginning  at  three  o'clock.  The 
morning  seemed  hesitant,  the  sun,  if  there  were  the  rarity  of 
clear  weather,  sickening  at  the  thought  of  what  it  must  see, 
battling  weakly  with  the  sulphurous  smoke-wreaths,  below 
which  rolled  sluggish  waves  of  mist  and  animal-gasses  gen 
erated  in  the  fatal  swamp.  One  has  said  that  nothing  could  live 
out  there,  and  yet  many  optimistic  robins,  long  accustomed  to 
the  guns,  were  ever  ready  to  welcome  the  day.  Their  first  flut 
ter  was  as  a  signal :  the  stridor  of  the  artillery  would  immedi 
ately  recommence,  and  its  mad  bellowings,  its  deafening 
shrieks  continue  until  reason  tottered.  The  men  would  think 
that  they  could  bear  them  not  an  instant  longer — and  would 
bear  them.  Not  cowardice,  but  a  revolt  of  the  auditory  nerves, 
which  seemed  no  longer  controllable — and  would  be  controlled. 
It  was  quite  as  Chrissly  had  once  described  it;  but  Chrissly 
had  since  discovered,  and  now  imparted,  the  sole  method  of 
quelling  that  reprising:  one  must  center  one's  attention  on 
the  course  of  each  shell,  must  determine  on  which  side  it  was 
passing  and  try  to  occupy  the  mind  with  its  character. 

Andy  and  his  companions,  cramped  in  the  muddy  trench', 
were  no  longer  the  soldiers  of  tradition.  They  were  so 
wrapped  in  fold  after  fold  of  all  the  clothes  in  their  kit,  and 
of  all  the  rags  to  be  ravished  from  the  outlying  dead,  that 
every  man  was  twice  his  natural  breadth.  Other  care  of  the 
person  was  impossible ;  their  hands  became  filthy  claws,  their 
beards  grew  rank,  their  faces  were  often  unrecognizable 


VICTOKIOUS  335 

because  of  the  dirt  upon  them.  The  recurring  need  for  gas 
masks  constantly  curtailed  conversation,  and  their  three  re 
laxations  were  watching  the  battles  of  aircraft  and  anti-air 
craft  guns,  taking  pot-shots  at  the  enemy — a  sport  that  did 
not  commend  itself  as  sportsmanlike  to  Andy — or  stirring 
the  Germans  to  a  fusillade  by  firing  one  themselves,  and 
finally  eating  the  rough  fare  that  the  cooks  brought  out  to 
them  under  a  rain  of  lead.  When  a  man  crouched  alone  in  the 
slime  and  looked  at  the  damp  wall  directly  ahead  of  him,  it 
was  certain  that  he  envisaged  there  some  picture  of  somebody 
at  home. 

The  long  nights  were  little  better  than  the  long  days ;  the 
night  was  not  much  more  than  the  day  with  complete  dark 
ness  added.  Threatening  shadows  stalked  in  No  Man's  Land, 
flares  and  star-shells  only  gave  the  distorted  an  increased  dis 
tortion.  Preying  creatures  made  noises  that  were  mistaken 
for  the  first  signs  of  an  attack.  In  the  dug-out  the  air  was  so 
foul  that  Flynn  said  only  the  activities  of  the  vermin  kept 
one  active  enough  to  combat  asphyxiation. 

Most  of  the  squad  became  superstitious :  you  must  not  light 
three  cigarettes  from  one  match ;  you  must  never  tighten  your 
helmet's  chin-strap  after  putting  the  helmet  on ;  you  must  al 
ways  avoid  the  numbers  4,  8  and  13.  A  dull  disease  laid  hold 
of  two  or  three  of  the  men,  a  fever  that  came  and  went,  leav 
ing  a  dragging  lassitude;  everybody  developed  a  dirt-rash. 
Andy  was  weakened  by  a  cold,  and  Davies  successfully  disputed 
with  Chrissly  the  privilege  of  taking  the  lad's  hour  on  guard, 
while  Winters  lent  him  a  sweater  and  went  over  the  seams  of 
his  blouse  with  a  lighted  candle,  burning  body-lice. 

"It's  hell  here,"  said  Winters.  "In  Gawd's  name,  why  don't 
they  let  us  go  over  the  top  ?" 

Levy  had  a  plan  for  a  raid  that  would  necessarily  prove  suc 
cessful,  but  Flynn  found  this  virtue  in  the  life:  that  it  left 
small  leisure  for  regretting  one's  past.  The  squad's  first 
casualty  was  in  the  case  of  Campbell,  who  put  his  careless 
head  above  the  trench -top,  had  his  cigarette  shot  from  his  lips 
and  then,  as  he  peevishly  complained  of  that  loss,  received  a 
neck-wound  which  sent  him,  dripping  blood,  to  the  rear. 


336  yiCTORIOUS 

One  day,  just  as  Andy's  cold  was  better,  letters  arrived — 
their  first  since  leaving  the  camp — and  the  delight  of  the 
lucky  was  as  keen  as  the  disappointment  of  the  unfortunate. 
Chrissly  was  angry  because  his  letter  came  not  from  Leonie, 
but  from  Minnie,  who,  now  that  he  was  again  overseas,  had 
decided  to  veil  her  chagrin  in  one  more  effort  at  recapture. 
The  former  Amishman's  reply  was  brief: 

"DEAR  MINNIE  : 

"Thanks  fer  your  letter.    Don't  write  again. 

"CHBISSLY." 

For  Andy  there  was  no  letter  at  all. 

VIII 

He  did  his  guard-turn  that  nigh't,  but  he  was  very  tired  and 
still  weak  from  his  illness.  He  could  scarcely  keep  his  heavy 
head  poised  before  the  loop-hole.  It  would  sink  toward  the 
support  of  the  parapet;  his  eyelids  were  like  pieces  of  metal. 
He  welcomed  every  star-shell  because  it  prodded  him  to  wake- 
fulness.  The  tobacco  had  given  out,  and,  although  normally 
a  light  smoker,  he  longed  for  a  cigarette  as  a  man  that  has  for 
a  day  had  no  water  longs  for  a  drink.  He  fell  to  thinking  of 
Americus  and  of  what  the  awakening  woods  must  be  like  now. 
He  thought  of  the  S}rlvia  of  his  early  dreams  and  of  how  he 
came  here.  He  considered  his  course  absolutely  consistent: 
placed  as  he  had  been,  his  first  duty  was  to  tell  the  people  at 
home  of  the  abuses  that  were  threatening  their  men  with 
death  and  their  cause  with  defeat;  when  that  course  was  im 
passably  'barred  to  him,  his  next  duty  was  enlistment.  He 
had  done  it  and  had  no  regrets. 

Somebody  struck  him  roughly  on  the  shoulder. 

"Keep  your  damned  eyes  to  that  hole,  Brown.  What  the 
hell's  the  matter  with  you  ?" 

It  was  Garcia;  he  was  a  wan  scorbutic  figure.   Andy  said: 

"I'm  sorry,  sir.    It  won't  happen  again." 

"You  were  asleep,"  said  Garcia.    His  voice  showed  malice. 


yiCTOKIOUS  337 

Andy  had  not  been  asleep,  and  he  knew  that  Garcia  knew 
it.  "No,  sir/'  he  said. 

"Don't  contradict  me.  I  could  have  you  shot  for  sleeping 
at  your  post/' 

Andy  said  nothing. 

"For  two  cents,  I'd  do  it,"  Garcia  pursued.  "It's  thanks  to 
you  I'm  out  here." 

McGregor's  letters  had  said  nothing  of  this,  but  Andy 
guessed  a  little  of  how  he  had  influenced  Garcia's  transfer 
ence  from  Paris,  and  he  knew  that  the  work  of  a  front-line 
intelligence-officer  included  scouting  in  No  Man's  Land, 
which  was  no  pleasant  job.  He  watched  Garcia  as  the  lieu 
tenant  passed  on,  with  regret.  He  had  no  hunger  for  ven 
geance. 

IX 

By  this  time,  everybody,  even  Elynn,  fretted  for  action. 
They  all  wanted  to  try  a  raid. 

"Ain't  we  ever  goin'  to  get  a  chance?"  demanded  tow- 
headed  Winters.  He  looked  at  the  thunderous  skies,  but  he 
addressed  the  distant  staff,  and  he  voiced  the  plea  of  the  en 
tire  line. 

All  sorts  of  silly  rumors  came  to  them  from  nowhere.  Now 
they  were  depressed  by  the  certainty  that  events  were  going 
badly  in  the  north ;  now  encouraged  by  some  trifle,  which  they 
took  as  an  indication  that  they  were  to  be  permitted  a  raid. 
After  the  first  novelty  of  the  trenches  and  its  horror  had  some 
what  abated,  they  talked  of  their  coming  term  in  billets ;  but 
this  talk  had  waned  before  the  growing  appetite  for  hand-to- 
hand  battle.  What  was  the  good  of  staying  here  to  be  shelled 
and  not  doing  anything  in  return  ?  They  did  not  reckon  with 
the  fact  that  their  own  artillery,  although  hampered  by  an 
ammunition-famine,  was  serving  the  Germans  something  of 
what  the  German  artillery  was  serving  them. 

Andy's  squad  appeared  to  be  pointedly  neglected.  Nightly, 
other  groups  took  off  their  identification-disks — men  not 
nearly  so  good,  said  Johnson,  as  his  men — and  crawled  out 
into  a  No  Man's  Land  across  which  machine-guns  could  throw 


338  VICTORIOUS 

their  shots  three  ways  at  one  time.  Some  of  these  scouting- 
parties  had  lost  their  course,  got  into  the  enemy's  trenches  and 
yet  returned  safe.  Now  and  then  a  man  was  killed,  and  more 
often  men  were  wounded.  There  was  a  fellow  in  the  scorned 
C  Company  that  had  lain  for  twenty-four  hours  in  a  shell-hole, 
but  come  in  safe.  Still  another  that  Andy  laughed  at  for  his 
jack-in-the-box  antics  as  he  darted  hither  and  yon  was  shot 
through  the  head  before  the  watchers  realized  the  danger  of 
his  position.  Yet  all  these  things  happened  to  other  people: 
there  was  talk  in  the  squad  of  executing  a  raid  of  their  own. 

"Perhaps  the  Boche'll  come  after  us,"  Andy  suggested. 

"They  can't,"  explained  Levy.  "They  need  all  the  men  they 
can  spare  up  the  line.  That's  why  we  ought  to  try  a  raid." 

"They  haven't  got  the  nerve  to  come  after  us,"  said  Winters. 

There  was  a  night  when  they  heard  a  queer  whimpering 
sound  outside  the  trench.  Something  was  dragging  itself  to 
ward  them,  wriggling  along  on  its  back,  a  foot  at  a  time.  A 
German  star-shell  showed  it  to  be  a  German  soldier  fright 
fully  mangled.  German  machine-guns  put  an  end  to  him. 


Then  something  happened.  The  whole  section  of  the 
horizon  opposite  burst  into  flame.  Hundreds  of  guns  poured 
out  shells  that  fell  a  short  distance  behind  the  line  of  trenches 
of  which  Andy's  trench  was  a  part.  The  noise  was  appalling, 
the  heat  terrible.  It  kept  on  and  on.  The  cooks  could  not 
bring  up  food,  the  rear  could  not  send  up  reenforcements.  Or 
ders  were  shouted,  but  they  could  not  be  heard;  they  were 
obeyed  simply  because  the  men  knew  what  orders  must,  in 
such  an  event,  be  given.  This  was  a  barrage-prelude  to  a  raid. 

The  squad  donned  its  masks  against  shell-gas  and,  bay- 
onnetted  rifles  in  hand,  leaped  at  the  peep-holes  and  watched 
the  fiery  panorama:  spurts  of  light,  vast  fans  of  flame,  long 
shafts  of  redness.  The  roar  shook  everything ;  though  his  body 
was  wet  with  sweat,  Andy's  eyes  felt  like  red-hot  marbles ;  he 
risked  lifting  his  gas-mask  to  drink  from  his  canteen,  but 


VICTOKIOUS  339 

water  was  one  of  the  things  that  could  not  now  reach  here : 
the  canteen  was  empty. 

A  new  line  of  fire  developed.  Beginning  close  to  the  mole- 
trails  of  the  enemy,  it  advanced  toward  the  American  lines. 

Chrissly  pointed.    It  was  as  if  he  said : 

"They're  back  of  that.    They're  coming !" 

Through  the  flames,  Andy  could  see  them  coming:  a  line 
of  men  in  extended  order.  They  would  fall  to  the  ground; 
he  thought  them  all  shot  down;  but  they  rose  immediately 
and  came  farther  forward. 

Something  that  was  not  sweat  added  to  the  dampness  of 
Andy's  forehead.  He  felt  no  pain — a  fragment  of  shrapnel 
had  torn  away  a  shred  of  his  scalp — but  he  bound  his  hand 
kerchief  around  his  head.  His  overcoat,  sweater  and  blouse 
were  off.  So  were  those  of  the  other  men,  silhouetted  at  their 
posts  about  him.  Their  open  shirts  showed  to  those  nearest 
them  the  workings  of  their  throats. 

American  machine-guns  rattled  from  near-by  nests ;  but  the 
Germans  continued  advancing.  From  the  next  trench  a  man 
staggered  into  Andy's  and  fell  sprawling  there,  his  mask  shot 
off,  his  eyeballs  protruding,  his  twisted  mouth  making  sounds 
that  could  reach  nobody's  ears  save  his  own.  There  was  no 
time  to  help  him,  and  he  was  beyond  help.  A  shrapnel-shell 
broke  over  that  end  of  the  trench,  and,  in  the  light  of  a  co 
incident  flare,  the  man  died  with  an  expression  on  his  face 
like  that  on  the  face  of  a  child  who  does  not  know  why  it  is 
being  punished. 

Andy  turned  back  at  the  loop-hole;  but  the  enemy  were 
tumbling  into  the  trench. 

They  were  all  about  him.  The  pit  had  become  a  swirling 
mass  of  men.  Everybody  was  fighting.  You  might  be  fight 
ing  your  comrade,  but  you  had  to  fight. 

A  great  hulk  of  a  man  was  lunging  at  Andy's  abdomen. 
Andy's  rifle  parried  the  thrust ;  his  bayonet  passed  through  the 
fellow's  neck.  He  wrenched  it  out  and  wheeled  to  meet  an 
other  lunge  from  another  quarter;  he  pressed  the  trigger  of 
his  rifle  without  bringing — as  indeed  there  was  neither  time 


340  VICTORIOUS 

nor  space  to  do — the  butt  to  his  shoulder,  and  this  second 
enemy  fell.  A  figure  with  a  flashing  knife  leaped  upon  him ; 
Andy  closed  and  grappled ;  together  the  pair  rolled  in  the  mud 
amid  feet  that  kicked  and  trampled  on  them.  .  .  . 

XI 

"Cut  it  out !   Cut  it  out !  You're  wasting  ammunition." 

Andy  realized  that  he  was  lying  maskless  across  the  parapet 
and  shooting  with  what  must  be  a  German  rifle,  at  nothing 
ness.  Johnson  was  tugging  at  his  belt  and,  because  he  came 
down  without  a  twinge,  he  knew  that  he  was  unhurt.  Flares 
were  still  constant,  and  he  looked  on  a  horrid  picture. 

Faces  up  and  faces  down,  crouching,  twisting,  outspread, 
bodies  lay  about  in  a  tangled  heap.  Here  was  one  with  its 
legs  bent  impossibly  under  it,  there  one  the  head  of  which  was 
wrenched  completely  around  on  its  broken  neck.  Nearly  all 
wore  German  uniforms ;  most  showed  their  teeth ;  in  the  midst 
of  them  was  extended  the  corpse  of  Winters,  his  two  hands 
hiding  his  face. 

Andy's  first  thought  was  one  of  horror  that  he  had  helped 
in  this  slaughter,  his  next  clear  realization  of  its  necessity. 
Then  he  bent  over  tow-headed  Winters :  that  soldier  had  been 
bayonetted  through  the  chest ;  the  blade  was  still  in  the  wound, 
the  attached  rifle  sagging  after  it.  Andy  withdrew  the  hands 
to  close  the  eyes.  The  face,  he  found,  was  calm;  it  had  the 
dignity  of  one  that  has  lucidly  given  all  that  is  his  to  give. 

Save  a  few  of  the  enemy's  dead,  nobody  was  masked  now; 
most  masks  had  been  ripped  away  in  the  hand-to-hand  fight 
ing,  and,  as  soon  as  the  raid  ended,  it  was  discovered  that  gas 
had  played  no  part  in  it.  The  men  shouted  joyously  to  one 
another  and  clapped  one  another  on  the  shoulders;  they  ex 
changed  loud  narratives  and  inquiries,  congratulations  and 
commiserations. 

Winters'  was  the  only  death  in  the  squad,  and  there  was 
miraculously  no  serious  wound  save  in  the  case  of  big  Davies. 
Too  weak  to  move,  the  man  that  had  done  guard-duty  for 
Andy  sat  staunching  a  profusely  bleeding  thrust  in  his  left 


VICTORIOUS  341 

shoulder  and  placidly  waiting  th'e  stretcher-bearers.  Chrissty 
had  some  superficial  cuts  that  his  friends'  first-aid  kits  re 
paired;  Levy's  knee  was  sprained,  and  a  gun-butt  had  raised 
a  large  welt  on  Johnson's  forehead.  Untouched  Flynn  was 
saying : 

"Sure  but  they're  not  any  good  at  all!  They  never  fazed 
me — not  a  wan  ov  'em."  He  wrung  Andy's  hand — he  who  had 
once  knocked  him  down:  "You're  a  rale  scrapper,  Brownie. 
I  watched  you  while  I  was  bitin*  this  fellow's  thumb  off."  He 
nodded  to  a  man  beside  him ;  he  spat.  "Fough,  but  he  tastes 
bad !"  said  Flynn. 

For  Flynn  had  taken  the  only  prisoner.  The  fellow  was 
nursing  his  bitten  hand,  but  doing  so  with  a  face  that  showed 
considerable  satisfaction  with  his  lot.  He  was  a  young  blond 
man ;  he  might  have  been  one  of  the  waiters  in  the  New  York 
roof-garden  whither  Blunston  had  taken  Andy  in  the  long- 
ago.  Andy  had  wondered  what  German  soldiers  would  look 
like:  they  looked  like  anybody  else. 

Levy  explained,  while  none  listened,  just  why  the  raid  was 
a  failure.  Chrissly  went  over  Andy  for  signs  of  a  wound. 
Davies,  while  he  waited  for  the  stretcher,  gasped: 

"Wasn't  it  a  fine  fight,  though?  .  .  .  I'll  betcha  we  put 
up  the  best  fight  around  here !" 

Then  they  all  fell  to  talking  about  Winters : 

"Got  it  right  in  the  chest." 

"That's  hard  luck,  that  is." 

"Remember  how  he  was  always  kickin'  for  a  real  fight  ?  He 
wouldn't  call  this  anything !" 

"Poor  old  Winters." 

"Must  'a'  died  right  off — no  pain,  you  know." 

"Flynn  got  the  fellow  that  got  him ;  didn't  you,  Flynn  ?" 

"He  was  a  regular  fellow,  Winters  was." 

No  one  looked  at  the  body  a  second  time.  When  Johnson, 
who  had  gone  to  get  news  from  the  neighboring  trenches,  re 
turned  with  Sergeant  Ryan,  they  said :  "Winters  is  dead." 

"You  knowed  Winters  got  his,  didn't  you  ?" 

Cross-eyed  Johnson,  the  former  factory-foreman,  uttered 
something  strangely  like  a  sob.  Then  he  swore  lustily. 


342  VICTORIOUS 

"Shut  up,"  he  said.  "  'Course  I  know  it.  He  was  the  best 
of  the  lot  of  you." 

Ryan  said :  "Schwartz  is  dead.  KozlofFll  lose  his  right  arm." 

XII 

When  dusk  fell,  Lieutenant  Graaberg  came  cheerfully 
among  them  and  dispensed  news  to  greet  which  they  coined 
new  oaths  of  satisfaction. 

Johnson  dealt  out  hand-grenades ;  watches  were  set.  Ryan 
passed  through  the  trenches  with  a  basket  of  carrier-pigeons. 
They  were  to  return  the  Germans'  raid  in  kind. 


CHAPTEE  XXV 

HOW  ANDY  WENT  "OVER  THE  TOP" 

IT  SEEMED  as  if  the  zero-hour  would  never  come.  The 
men,  who  had  studied  the  maps  and  had  their  instructions  by 
heart,  cursed  softly.  The  day  had  been  clear,  but  it  was  a 
damp  night,  and  the  spring  air  was  still  cold.  When  one  rose, 
his  joints  cracked.  Each  again  and  again  went  covertly  over 
his  rifle  and  bayonet;  there  was  more  attention  paid  to  of 
fensive  weapons  than  to  defensive.  Somebody  was  always 
looking  at  his  watch  and  thinking  it  had  stopped ;  the  soldiers 
crowded  one  another  at  the  peep-holes  out  of  which  there  was 
for  long  nothing  to  be  seen  but  slowly  eddying  clouds  of  mist. 

Levy  proffered  his  hand  to  Flynn.    "So  long,"  he  said. 

"Aw,  go  to  hell  wid  yez !"  said  Flynn ;  but  he  said  it  with  a 
bruskness  not  unkindly. 

At  last,  Andy,  looking  directly  eastward,  saw,  or  thought  he 
saw,  not  the  dawn,  but  a  faint  lessening  of  the  darkness  there. 
Lieutenant  Graaberg,  who  had  been  standing  in  the  elbow, 
walked  quietly  away. 

Then  the  American  artillery  opened  fire. 

It  was  like  the  night  before  last,  but  the  shells  were  less 
numerous  and  were  "departures/'  not  "arrivals." 

As  they  were  putting  on  their  gas-masks,  Chrissly  said : 

"I  don't  sink  it'll  be  much  of  a  barrage.  One  o'  them  first- 
aid  fellers  as  come  fer  Winters  tol'  me  Washington  cabled  as 
we  was  usin'  too  many  shells." 

Johnson,  with  picturesque  oaths,  told  him  to  shut  up. 

They  were  to  follow  the  advancing  barrage  and  not  to  be 
afraid  of  running  into  it;  they  were  assured  that  it  would 
precede  them  and  that  a  smoke-screen  would  also  go  ahead 
of  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  neither  as  they  stood  poised  nor 
later,  did  any  one  of  them  think  again  about  the  barrage.  .  . 

343 


344:  yiCTOBIOUS 

II 

They  leaped  clear  of  the  parapet.  In  front  of  them,  as 
they  ran,  went  that  curtain  of  fire. 

Andy  heard,  distinct  in  the  ensuing  pandemonium,  German 
machine-gun  bullets  rattling  like  hail  on  the  debris  of  No 
Man's  Land,  beating  against  broken  wood  and  distorted  metal, 
lacerating,  doubtless,  the  unwincing  bodies  of  the  long  dead. 
What  he  felt  was  only  a  great  exultation,  a  high  joy.  He  felt 
the  capacity  for  sacrifice.  Once  he  had  a  quick  vision  of  the 
parlor  at  home  and  of  his  mother  in  it.  There  was  a  strange 
second  when  so  incongruous  a  strain  as  that  of  the  Pan-pipes 
in  Gounod's  Au  Printemps  seemed  interwoven  with  the 
raucous  screech  of  a  shell;  there  was  a  stranger  when  one  of 
the  running  forms  ahead  of  him  took  on  the  bright  likeness 
of  a  Maid  in  armor  with  a  flashing  sword  in  her  outstretched 
hand. 

The  ground  was  dangerously  rent;  he  fell  many  times.  A 
German  "crump"  shattered  the  earth  close  by.  The  hurtling 
column  from  the  American  trenches  seemed  futilely  few. 
The  soldier  nearest  in  advance  of  him  had  no  helmet — he  had 
no  head — had  only  a  spouting  neck — toppled  over :  something 
splashed  over  Andy's  hands. 

At  arm-signals  from  their  leaders,  whom  only  those  signals 
distinguished  as  leaders,  the  men  threw  themselves  to  the 
earth.  At  other  signals,  they  sprang  up  and  dashed  on  over 
the  shell-torn  surface  and  under  the  crackling  sky.  Andy 
passed  a  hooded  figure  clutching  its  breast  with  a  dripping 
claw  and  reeling  back  to  their  front  line ;  he  wrenched  his  side 
in  a  sudden  endeavor  to  avoid  setting  his  heel  on  the  upturned, 
maskless  face  of  the  Macedonian  Christopoulos,  who,  dying  in 
the  glare  of  a  star-shell,  looked  more  than  ever  Italian. 

Now  they  were  in  a  tearing  maze  of  barbed-wire,  which 
robbed  the  dead  of  their  rightful  couches  and  entangled  the 
living.  Something — who  knew? — had  prevented  the  demoli 
tion  of  that  maze  and  was  now  stopping  the  barrage;  but  of 
this  there  was  no  time  to  think,  nor  was  there  any  time  to 
think  of  scratches ;  only  to  fight  and  go  forward. 


YICTORIOUS  345 

And  then  they  were  there. 

Andy  was  looking  down  into  a  trench  along  which  gray 
forms  ran — the  forms  of  men  with  empty  hands  raised  in  the 
instinct  to  protect  their  heads.  They  ran  among  flashes  and 
explosions,  for  other  men  were  throwing  bombs  among  them, 
and  the  smoke  of  each  explosion  was  followed  by  a  chorus  of 
piteous  yells.  He  was  conscious  of  a  grizzled  man,  one  mo 
ment  flattening  himself  against  the  farther  trench-wall,  his 
fists  pressed  to  his  eyes;  the  next,  and  that  man  was  a  pulp 
of  shredded  flesh  and  shattered  bone.  Legs  and  arms  lay  in 
the  mud. 

His  stomach  heaved.  He  was  saved  by  a  spasm  of  resist 
ance  on  the  part  of  a  platoon  of  Germans  that  rushed  out  from 
the  next  trench.  There  were  two  or  three  minutes  of 
bayonetting. 

in 

Then,  at  least  in  the  point  in  the  line  toward  which  Andy 
and  his  immediate  comrades  had  delivered  their  attack,  the 
raid  was  over.  It  was  victorious,  and  Andy  and  his  fellows 
were  in  the  trench  carelessly  waving  masks  and  helmets  over 
their  defenseless  heads. 

It  was  a  shambles.  Here  a  seldier  with  a  quiet  face  lay, 
a  little  black  hole  between  his  closed  eyes,  with  his  hair  among 
the  gushing  bowels  of  the  bomb-torn  corpse  of  a  lieutenant. 
There  were  silent  men  bleeding  to  death  from  wounds  that  had 
lopped  away  hands  or  feet.  A  sergeant  was  curled  in  the 
muck  of  a  corner  holding  his  boot  and  looking  stupidly  at  the 
severed  foot  that  was  in  it.  Against  the  firing-board,  a  dark 
man  in  a  drenched  shirt  was  propped ;  the  last  agony  had  ex 
tended  all  his  limbs  at  ridiculous  angles  and  on  his  lolling 
face  there  was  the  grin  of  a  buffoon. 

Of  all  people  in  the  world,  terrible  First  Sergeant  Ryan 
was  patting  Andy  on  the  shoulder : 

"Damn  good  work,"  he  was  saying.  "I  saw  you  put 
two  of  them  out  of  business  up  there." 

Andy  had  not  the  slightest  recollection  of  the  act.  He  was 
about  to  say  so  when  Ryan  turned  to  Angelelli,  to  whom  the 


346  VICTORIOUS 

carrier-pigeons  had,  it  appeared,  been  entrusted.  It  was  An- 
gelelli's  duty  to  release  them  with  a  message  giving  news  of 
their  success  before  the  men  themselves  returned. 

"Did  you  send  those  birds?"  asked  Eyan. 

Angelelli  smiled  assent. 

"  Damn  it  all,  you  oughtn't  have  done  that  till  we'd  identi 
fied  this  Boche  unit  here !" 

"Me,  I  identify  it  alia  myself,"  Angelelli  grinned.  "An' 
I  write  heem:  'I'm  tired  a-carryin'  dees  damma  pidge'." 

IV 

There  had,  of  course,  been  no  idea  of  holding  the  trench. 
The  raid  was  made  for  the  purpose  of  identification  referred 
to  by  Ryan,  and,  the  officers  accomplishing  this,  as  quick  a 
return  as  possible  was  imperative.  The  artillery's  work  had 
been  exact,  but  its  lack  of  shells  had  compelled  a  fatal  brevity ; 
to  remain  for  more  than  the  fewest  essential  minutes  would 
be  to  court  death  or  capture.  Little  battles  were  engaging  the 
trenches  to  right  and  left  of  them,  but  Andy's  unit  seemed 
no  sooner  to  have  attained  their  objective  than  they  began 
scaling  the  top  to  depart  from  it.  Andy  and  Chrissly  were, 
however,  the  last  to  leave,  the  former  having  stopped  to  do 
what  he  could  for  the  German  sergeant,  the  latter  to  tie  to  his 
belt  a  German  helmet  intended  for  Leonie. 

They  all  reached  the  top  and  started  back.  A  second  later 
they  were  in  a  whirl  of  fighting  with  a  bunch  of  gray  men 
that  amazingly  came  upon  them  from  up  the  line. 

Andy's  bayonet  broke  in  the  first  antagonist  against  whom  he 
used  it.  He  was  aware  of  his  comrades  darting  by  him.  He 
was  aware  that,  obedient  to  instructions  to  take  no  unneces 
sary  risks,  he  was  following  them.  Then  the  heavens  fell, 
and  the  earth  opened,  and  there  was  oblivion.  .  .  . 

All  this  occurred  during  one  of  twenty-four  hours  concern 
ing  which  the  official  communique  announced  that  there  was 
"nothing  of  importance  to  report"  from  Andy's  sector. 


VICTORIOUS  347 


Andy  was  sure,  &s  soon  as  he  came  to  himself,  that,  sore  as 
he  was,  he  had  not  been  badly  injured,  and  he  made  this  as 
surance  doubly  sure  by  stretching  first  one  arm  and  then  the 
other,  one  leg  and  then  the  other,  and  by  going  over  himself 
with  his  hands  without  budging  more  than  he  had  to  in  the 
puddle  in  which  he  lay.  It  was  only  when  he  had  finished  his 
examination  that  he  began  to  express  interest  in  the  puddle. 

The  puddle  was  black,  and  it  stank.  It  occupied  the  bot 
tom,  the  rather  cramping  bottom,  of  a  circular  cavity  that  was 
a  good  deal  greater  in  diameter  at  the  top.  The  sides  were 
of  scraped  gray  clay. 

Andy  lay  still  for  a  while.  He  was  horribly  thirsty,  but  he 
would  not  drink  of  the  filth  in  which  he  perforce  wallowed. 
He  looked  at  his  watch:  it  had  indeed  stopped.  Overhead 
raged  the  now  familiar  cacophony  of  battle,  but  he  knew 
enough  of  battle  to  distinguish  its  day  from  its  night,  and, 
judging  from  the  prevailing  light,  or,  rather,  the  obtaining 
degree  of  darkness,  he  decided  that  the  hour  must  be  about 
two  of  an  afternoon.  Cautiously  and  slowly,  because  such 
an  act  might  be  dangerous,  and  was,  to  his  bruised  and  stif 
fened  body,  painful,  he  raised  himself,  his  belly  against  the 
cavity's  sides,  to  a  point  from  which  he  could  just  look  over 
the  top. 

Special  landmark  there  was  none,  but  he  could  tell  that  he 
was  Somewhere  about  the  center  of  No  Man's  Land  and  that 
the  German  trenches  were  in  the  direction  in  which  he  was 
then  gazing.  Evidently,  he  had  been  knocked  over  by  the 
shock  of  some  explosion,  had  dazedly  made  a  break  toward  his 
own  lines  and  had  stumbled,  at  the  same  instant,  into  uncon 
sciousness  and  this  shell-hole.  He  had  escaped  drowning 
simply  by  virtue  of  falling  in  such  a  manner  that  his  head 
was  out  of  water. 

He  must  wait  for  the  real  night. 

In  the  agonies  of  thirst  he  waited.  There  were  hours  of 
torture.  There  were  long  minutes  when  he  debated  whether  it 
would  not  be  better  to  drink  of  the  poisonous  liquid  about 


348  VICTORIOUS 

him,  and  other  and  yet  longer  minutes  when  he  thought  it 
simplest  to  rush  for  his  trenches  at  once  and  so  to  die.  His 
tongue  lolled  from  his  mouth,  a  rough  dry  thing.  He  fought, 
not  always  a  winning  fight,  against  delirium.  Death  seemed 
a  very  little  matter  to  bother  about,  but  because  it  appeared 
easy,  he  felt  it  wrong  to  seek  death.  He  argued,  in  McGreg 
or's  words,  but  to  a  nobler  purpose,  that  a  dead  soldier  was 
of  no  good  to  his  country,  that  he  must  preserve  his  life  now 
if  only  to  lose  it  usefully.  Even  into  his  madness  he  carried 
the  resolution  of  remaining  where  he  was  until  nightfall. 

At  nightfall  he  set  out. 

At  first  he  went  in  a  stooping  posture,  dropping  flat 
whenever  a  flare  or  a  star-shell  illuminated  the  horrors  over 
which  he  blundered  and  revealed  the  waste  to  the  unsleeping 
snipers  and  machine-gunners.  Soon  worn  out  by  this,  he 
began  to  go  on  all  fours.  In  a  little  while  he  was  crawling 
like  a  wounded  snake.  His  course  lay  among  the  carcasses 
of  men,  the  spatter  of  bullets,  the  detonations  of  shells;  it 
lay  among  blasted  tree-stumps  and  broken  posts,  over  pieces 
of  barbed-wire,  wheels,  shot-riddled  helmets,  rotting  accouter- 
ments — all  the  unsalvageable  wreckage  of  war.  The  earth 
was  as  full  of  holes  as  a  Sweitzer  cheese.  It  was  necessary  to 
climb  and  crawl  into  and  out  of  holes  waist  deep  here  and 
there  so  large  that  a  fair-sized  house  could  be  hidden  in  them. 
The  soil  had  been  turned  over  again  and  yet  again.  Not  only 
was  it  now  unlike  what  it  had  been  a  month  ago,  but  a  month 
ago  it  \vas  utterly  unlike  what  it  had  been  thirty  days  before 
that ;  what  was  now  a  hillock  was  yesterday  a  shell-hole,  and 
that  which  was  to-day  a  crater  would,  a  week  hence,  be  a 
mound. 

Andy  became  heedless  of  the  shells.  He  became  heedless 
of  the  passage  of  time.  Having  once  headed  toward  the 
American  lines,  he  thought  no  more  of  direction.  He  was 
crazy  with  thirst,  he  was  hungry,  he  was  sore  from  the  battle, 
he  was  stiff  from  his  night  in  the  fetid  pool.  His  arms  would 
sometimes  refuse  to  drag  his  body  forward,  his  toes  to  push 
it  an  inch  farther.  Once  or  twice  he  fainted,  but  by  the  time 
he  had  recovered  consciousness,  purpose  had  triumphed  over 


VICTORIOUS  349 

fatigue;  with  the  energy  with  which  he  had  once  pursued 
his  course  against  the  censorship  for  the  enlightenment  of  his 
public,  with  the  determination  with  which  he  later  under 
took  hie  new  duties,  he  kept  on  crawling.  .  .  . 


It  was  Chrissly  that  dragged  him  into  the  trench  —  against 
overwhelming  chances,  he  had  -somehow  come  back  to  the 
very  trench  from  which  he  set  out  twenty-four  hours  earlier. 

"I  been  out  in  No  Man's  Land  lookin'  fer  you/'  said 
Chrissly,  "an'  near  got  arrested  fer  it.  I  been  lookin'  fer 
you  efferywheres.  Where  was  you,  anyhow?" 

Andy's  tired  heart  thumped  with  gratitude,  but  his  crack 
ing  tongue  could  not  forbear  an  answer: 

"Over  to  the  Hotel  Americus  for  a  glass  of  beer.  Where'd 
you  suppose?" 

Chrissly  wanted  to  send  him  to  hospital,  but  Andy  wouldn't 
hear  of  it:  he  only  fainted.  It  was  not  until  daylight  that 
he  would  consider  leaving. 

Then  a  lieutenant  passed  along  the  line,  consulting  cap 
tains  regarding  men  commanded  by  them.  He  held  his 
breath,  thrust  his  head  into  Andy's  dug-out  and  called  : 

"Private  Andrew  McK.  Brown!" 

Andrew  painfully  came  out.   He  sleepily  saluted. 

"Want  leave?"  asked  the  strange  lieutenant. 

"No,  sir." 

The  officer  showed  his.  amazement.    "You  don't?" 

"No,  sir." 

"Well,  you've  got  to  take  it.  Captain  Bates  recommends 
you  for  a  week  at  a  rest-camp." 

"If  you  please,  sir,  I'd  like  to  stay  with  my  company." 

"Your  regiment  goes  back  to  billets  to-morrow,  anyhow. 
You're  recommended  for  —  for"  —  he  consulted  a  note-book  — 
"for  good  work  in  a  trench-raid,  two  nights  ago." 

"Where  is  the  rest-camp?"  asked  Andy. 

"Dunno,"  said  the  lieutenant.  "Get  your  kit  together  and 
report  to  Captain  Bates." 


CHAPTEE  XXVT 

JUST  A  CHAPTER  TO  BE  SKIPPED  BY  EVERYBODY  THAT  DOESN'T 
CARE  ABOUT  LOVE 

ANDY  dipped  his  manicured  fingers  into  the  scented  finger- 
bowl  and  wiped  them  with  his  damask  napkin.  Then  he 
leaned  back  in  his  deep  chair,  stretched  his  long  legs  well 
under  the  recently  laden  table  and  heaved  the  sigh  of  the 
healthy  young  man  that  has  eaten  a  little  more  than  is  good 
for  him.  He  lit  one  of  his  host's  pet  cigars  and,  out  of  a 
far-tilted  head,  blew  a  thin  spiral  of  smoke  straight  heaven 
ward  :  it  was  like  the  smoke  of  a  thank-offering. 

"It  certainly  is  good  to  be  here,"  he  said. 

"Here,"  as  may  easily  be  imagined,  was  a  beautifully  ap 
pointed  private  dining-room. 

"And  it's  good  to  see  you  again,  too/'  Andy  added. 

"Are  you  sure  you  mean  that  ?"  McGregor  asked. 

He  eyed  Andy  with  the  jealous  gaze  of  genuine  affection. 
Himself  in  evening-clothes  and  sufficiently  invigorated  by 
half  a  bottle  of  M.  Ledaire's  best  Burgundy,  the  little  con 
tractor  thought  that  Andy's  military  experiences  had  done 
the  boy  no  end  of  good.  If  Andy's  clean  uniform  told  of  a 
slight  loss  of  weight,  it  was  equally  explicit  about  a  gain  of 
muscle,  and  the  freckled  face  of  its  wearer  had  the  glow  of 
an  athlete. 

Until  that  afternoon,  Andy  had  long  been  what  seemed  a 
great  way  from  McGregor.  They  had  met  in  Aix  only  toward 
the  end  of  Andy's  leave,  because,  during  the  larger  part  of  it, 
the  contractor  was  in  another  portion  of  the  country. 

"Good  to  see  you?"  repeated  Andy.    "You  bet  it  is!" 

McGregor  showed  a  slight  inclination  to  press  that  point, 

350 


VICTOKIOUS  351 

but  this  he  for  the  nonce  overcame.    "The  town's  cheered 
you  up?'5 

"It  ought  to." 

"Well,  I  guess  it's  an  all  right  place.  Of  course,  they've 
spoiled  it  hy  putting  the  lid  on  the  roulette- joints,  but  it's 
about  as  all  right  as  such  things  run  over  here." 

"I'll  show  you  what  I  think  of  it/'  said  Andy.  He  took 
an  unposted  letter  from  his  pocket  and  handed  McGregor 
the  first  few  pages.  "Head  that,"  said  Andy. 

The  contractor  read : 

/ 

"DEAREST  MOTHER — 

"All  at  the  same  time  and  under  the  same  roof: 

"Loie  Fuller  is  making  an  impromptu  speech; 

"Jim  Europe  is  beating  time  for  a  buck-and-wing  dance; 

"Winthrop  Ames  (shirt-sleeved)  is  rehearsing  a  slap-stick 
sketch ; 

"E.  H.  Sothern  has  stage-fright; 

"The  daughter-in-law  of  an  ex-President  is  doing  house- 
cleaning  by  hand ; 

"America's  greatest  opera-singer  is  at  a  piano,  leading  a 
bunch  of  doughboys  in  'Beautiful  Katie/ 

"And  the  richest  woman  in  New  York,  wearing  a  gingham 
apron,  is  selling  chocolate  from  behind  a  counter  to  a  dozen 
clamoring  khaki-men. 

"Aix-les-Bains  has  a  rue  Eoosevelt  and  a  rue  Pierrepont 
Morgan,  and  it's  American.  After  the  trenches,  it's  heaven, 
and  our  fellows  all  think  so,  even  if  they  do  call  it  Aches- 
and-Pains. 

"I  blew  in  the  first  of  the  week  and  got  bathed — hot  bathed 
and  barbered — oh,  barbered  till  I  smelt  a  mile! — and  slept 
in  a  real  bed  in  a  real  hotel  kept  by  a  royal  prince  that  pre 
tends  he's  only  a  hotel-keeper  called  Ledaire. 

"Mother,  it  used  to  have  a  population  of  eight  thousand 
out  of  season,  and  in  season  it  had  a  population  five  times  as 
large.  The  rich  Englishmen  that  didn't  come  to  it  to  play 
in  its  magnificent  casino,  came  to  it  to  take  its  waters,  and 
before  the  rich  Englishmen  came  the  rich  Eomans.  It  was  a 
proconsul  of  the  first  Caesar  that  built  the  baths — an  arch  and 
a  temple  of  Diana  are  still  standing.  The  two  springs  yield 
daily  over  a  million  gallons  of  water  at  a  mean  temperature 


352  YICTOEIOUS 

of  115  degrees,  loaded  with  carbonic  and  free  nitrogen  gas, 
sulphurated  hydrogen,  hydrophosphates  and  carbonates  of 
calcium,  some  chlorides  and  traces  of  bromides  and  iodites.* 
"You  may  drink  the  waters  or  get  into  them,  and  it  isn't 
only  the  people  that  bathe  in  Aix — the  town  itself  is  washed 
three  times  a  day." 

Many  things  had  happened  to  Sarah  before  she  received 
that  letter,  but  she  did  at  last  receive  it.  Blunston  thought 
that  it  showed  the  effects  of  army  life  on  a  bourgeoning  liter 
ary  style. 

ii 


McGregor  returned  the  letter  to  Andy.  He  made  but  one 
comment : 

"I'd  like  to  meet  your  mother." 

"You  ought  to,"  said  Andy.   "She's  a  real  mother." 

"The  best  woman  in  the  world,  I  suppose?" 

"None  better." 

The  contractor  studied  his  cigar.  "I  may  get  a  chance  to 
meet  her  soon.  I  haven't  much  more  than  another  two 
months'  work  over  here." 

"You're  not  going  home  ?"  Andy  leaned  forward  excitedly. 

"In  about  two  months,  I  guess.  I've  got  one  big  piece  of 
work  that'll  keep  me  a  while." 

"I  wish  you  would  look  her  up — just  to  say  you  saw  me. 
"Women  like  that  sort  of  thing,  you  know." 

"Do  they  ?  Lately,  I've  begun  to  wonder  if  they  knew  what 
they  do  like." 

Andy  laughed.    "You're  not  in  love?" 

"I'm  not  a  fool.  You  know  what  the  fellow  said :  'When 
a  man  finds  a  woman  there's  nothing  too  good  for,  he  offers 
her  himself.'  I'll  never  try  to  trot  in  double-harness  again, 
my  son." 

The  tokens  of  some  recollection  not  altogether  pleasant 

*  One  suspects  that  Andy  looked  in  the  guide-book  for  that :  when 
he  left  home,  he  knew  nothing  of  chemistry. — R.  W.  K. 


VICTORIOUS  353 

passed  over  Andy's  ingenuous  face.  "But  I  don't  see  why 
you  talk  that  way,"  he  said. 

"Look  here/'  said  McGregor.  He  tapped  his  cigar  against 
a  fragile  demi-tasse.  "There's  something  I  guess  I've  got  to 
say  to  you,  young  man.  It's  my  duty." 

Andy  just  managed  to  suppress  a  smile.  "Shoot,"  he  how 
ever  said. 

McGregor  turned  his  cigar  in  his  moutK.  "I  couldn't  ever 
see  why  two  people  couldn't  be  friends  outside  of  business 
hours,  no  matter  what  they  had  to  be  -inside." 

Andy  twinklingly  supposed  he  couldn't. 

"Of  course,"  McGregor  pursued,  "there  was  once  or  twice 
when  I  had  to  sprinkle  a  little  glass  in  front  of  your  auto, 
but  that  was  during  business  hours.  Eight  down  at  bottom, 
young  fellow,  I  always  liked  you.  I  liked  your  grit;  I  liked 
your  fight — and  I  found  out  I  even  liked  your  damn-fool 
stand  of  No-Compromise." 

"Thanks/'  Andy  said  into  his  blouse  collar. 

"I'm  old  enough  to  be  your  dad,"  continued  McGregor. 
"Fact  is,  I  had  a  kid  once,  and  he  died.  If  he'd  lived,  he'd 
be  just  your  age.  And  he  had  red  hair." 

There  was  a  gap  of  silence.  The  young  soldier  studied  his 
coffee-cup  and  discovered  that  something  was  stinging  his  eyes 
which  he  had  to  blink  to  keep  there.  The  contractor  looked  at 
the  ceiling  and  smoked  violently.  Presently  McGregor  re 
sumed  : 

"Anyhow,  I  liked  you.  I  like  you  now,  and  I  don't  want  to 
see  you  get  in  wrong  with  life.  Being  an  older  man,  it's  my 
duty  to  give  you  a  pointer." 

Andy  looked  up  quickly.  "I  think  I've  been  in  right  ever 
since  I  came  to  France.  Ever  since"  he  added.  "Oh,  I  know 
some  of  the  censors  are  decent  chaps.  Most  of  them.  I  had  a 
long  talk  with  one  about  Alan  Seegar  and  Rupert  Brooke  and 
— and  such  things.  It  isn't  the  individuals,  but  they've  got  a 
sort  of  fog-gas  that  they  use  against  the  people  at  home,  the 
way  the  Germans  use  mustard-gas  against  the  Allies." 

"You're  thinking  of  the  censorship  ?" 


354  VICTORIOUS 

"Yes." 

"I'm  not." 

"And  I  was  right  when  I  enlisted.  I  found  that  out"— 
Andy  nodded  northward — "up  there." 

"You  know  you  could  have  had  a  commission." 

"Somewhere  behind  the  lines ;  we  needed  fighting  men." 

"A  lot  of  'em,  my  son,  a  lot  of  'em.    You  were  just  one." 

"Then  I  was  one  more,"  said  Andy. 

"Oh,  all  right,"  McGregor  soothed  him.  " Anyhow,  you're 
in  for  it  now.  I'll  do  what  I  can  for  you — " 

"I  want  to  earn  what  I  get." 

"Sure  you  do.  I  know  now.  All  I  say  is,  I'll  try  to  see  you 
get  what  you  earn.  But  that's  not  what  I  wanted  to  talk  to 
you  about." 

Again  Andy  said :    "Shoot." 

McGregor  was  a  long  time  beginning. 

"Fellows  like  you  are,"  he  finally  said,  "get  the  idea  that 
the  Lord  made  women  according  to  the  rule  of  'the  best  comes 
last.'  He  didn't.  It's  the  way  the  man  said:  'The  Lord 
waited  till  everything  else  in  creation  was  ready,  because  He 
didn't  want  the  job  he  was  at  all  talked  over  and  pulled  to 
pieces  and  made  over  again/  Now,  we  both  of  us  know  an 
actress — " 

Andy  moved  uneasily. 

"Don't  get  excited.  Remember  how  it  was  I  came  to  talk  to 
you.  This  time  I  want  a  chance  to  say  something  that  won't 
hurt  anybody. — Well,  then,  this  young  lady's  a  nice  girl — as 
nice  as  any  stage-people  and  nicer'n  most — but  actresses  aren't 
the  sort  a  young  fellow  wants  to  think  too  much  about  if  he's 
going  to  get  on  in  the  world." 

Andy  sat  silent  a  while,  twisting  an  empty  wine-glass. 

"I'm  not  in  any  danger  of  thinking  too  much  about  this 
particular  actress,"  he  finally  said. 

"You  waited  too  long  to  make  up  that  speech,"  said  Mc 
Gregor. 

"It's  true,  anyhow,"  asserted  Andy,  "and  besides,  there's  no 
reason  why  an  actress  can't  be" — he  had  forgotten  nothing, 
but  he  went  on — "a  good  woman." 


VICTORIOUS  355 

«0h — reason!"  McGregor  pulled  at  his  mustache.  "What's 
reason  got  to  do  with  it  ?  Season  don't  count  with  women.  If 
you  find  you're  beginning  to  like  a  woman,  first  thing  for  you 
to  find  out  is  if  she's  got  a  husband." 

There  was  an  inexplicable  catch  in  Andy's  throat.  "A — a 
husband  ?" 

"In  the  background,"  nodded  McGregor.  "Most  of  'em 
have,  you  know — actresses." 

"I'm  afraid  I  don't  understand." 

In  the  fewest  possible  words — and  the  kindliest — McGregor 
told,  before  interruption  was  possible,  the  story  of  the  money 
sent  to  New  Orleans.  "Who  is  Ainslee  Eayburn?"  he  con 
cluded  :  "and  why  does  she  send  money  to  him  ?" 

"It's  none  of  our  business,"  said  Andy ;  but  he  added :  "It 
might  be  her  brother." 

"It  might  be,"  said  McGregor,  disregarding  the  first  state 
ment,  "but  it  isn't.  It  never  is." 

Andy  got  up.  "We  mustn't  talk  any  more  about  it,"  said 
he.  "I  tell  you,  there  isn't  any  danger  for  me — in  the  way 
you  think." 

McGregor  meant  every  word  he  said.  Now  something  in 
Andy's  voice  touched  him  even  more  deeply,  and  something  in 
Andy's  face  made  him  sure  that  there  was  indeed  no  danger. 
He  got  up,  too.  He  came  around  the  table  and  put  his  arm 
about  the  boy's  sturdy  shoulders. 

"I  see,"  he  said:  "there  was  something  else — something  I 
didn't  know  about." 

"Yes,"  said  Andy.  "Let's  go  round  to  the  casino.  Let's 
see  the  show  there.  I've  only  seen  it  three  times." 

"I  can't,"  McGregor  answered.  "I've  got  a  man  coming  here 
at  nine." 

"Then,  if  you  don't  mind,  I  think  Til  go." 

"But" — McGregor's  face  bespoke  his  anxiety — "I'll  see  you 
before  you  start  back  ?" 

"Of  course  you  will.  I  don't  leave  till  eight  to-morrow 
night." 


356  yiCTORIOUS 


in 


Contrary  to  his  expectations,  it  was  a  new  performance  that 
Andy  saw  at  the  casino.  Illness  had  invaded  the  company 
that  was  concluding  an  engagement  there;  the  company 
booked  for  the  next  week  could  not  be  hurried  away  from 
Paris,  but  a  third  company  had  been  brought  from  the  rem 
nants  of  the  American  camp.  Andy  was  late;  when  he  ar 
rived  at  the  theater,  Sylvia  was  on  the  stage. 

She  was  speaking  in  the  low  voice  the  thrill  of  which  he 
knew  so  well.  The  footlights  showed  her  massed  hair,  her 
level  brows,  the  childlike  mouth,  the  perfect  contour  of  cheek 
and  neck.  She  raised,  in  a  bit  of  stage-business,  a  hand  as 
white  as  cherry-blossoms.  .  .  . 


IV 


She  started  at  sight  of  Andy  when,  with  an  instantly  recog 
nizing  Tac  leading  her,  she  found  the  straight  young  soldier 
waiting  at  the  stage-door. 

"Andy  I9'  she  cried. 

She  ran  a  few  steps  toward  him;  then  stopped  uncertainly. 
In  two  great  strides  he  came  forward. 

They  had  a  thousand  things  to  say  to  each  other,  for  both 
forgot,  in  the  surprise  of  meeting,  the  restraint  that  each  had 
felt  when  last  they  parted ;  but  Sylvia,  it  appeared,  might  only 
make  the  rounds  of  the  Grand  Cercle's  gardens :  she  must  re 
turn  for  a  rehearsal.  The  next  day  was  a  Sunday,  and  there 
was  no  Sunday  rehearsing  permitted  under  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
auspices. 

"So  I  have  to  go  now,'*  she  said. 

"But  I  want  to  hear  more  ahout  you !" 

"I  want  to  hear  all  about  you." 

"I  haven't  half  begun  to  tell  you  yet." 

"There'll  be  other  days.  We're  to  take  the  other  company's 
place  and  play  here  all  next  week." 

"I'm  going  to-morrow,"  said  Andy:  "in  the  evening." 


VICTOKIOUS  357 

The  casino's  windows  flooded  their  path  with  light.  He 
could  see  her  draw  away  from  his  announcement. 

"Back— there  ?"  she  asked. 

He  nodded. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "and  I  have  to  go  now !" 

He  could  not  have  told  what  his  feelings  were.    "Don't  go." 

"I  must/' 

He  thought  of  taking  her  white  hand  and  keeping  her  by 
force.  He  thought  of  nothing  else. 

"Don't  go.    I've  half  a  mind  not  to  let  you." 

It  was  as  if  he  indeed  held  her.    "Please,"  she  pleaded. 

"Do  you  want  to  go  ?"  he  demanded. 

"I  must."    Her  voice  faltered. 

He  bent  to  her.    "But  do  you  want  to?" 

She  shook  her  golden  head. 

"Say  it,"  said  Andy. 

She  shook  her  head  again. 

"Say  it/'  he  commanded. 

He  could  scarcely  catch  her  whispered:  "I  don't  want 
to  go." 

The  roll  of  a  drum  came  from  the  grande  salle  of  the  casino. 
It  was  the  prelude  of  one  of  the  band's  fox-trots,  but  the  band 
was  a  military-band,  and  the  sound  passed  like  marching  men 
between  them.  It  broke  a  spell. 

"But  you'll  have  to-morrow  free,"  said  Andy. 

"Oh,  yes — to-morrow." 

Their  tones  had  become  conventional. 

"And  you  still  like  to  walk?" 

"Of  course." 

"Then  we'll  drive  through  the  mountains  to  a  place  I  know 
and  walk  back  by  the  lake." 

"I'd  love  it." 

"Is  nine  o'clock  too  early — for  an  actress  ?" 

"Not  for  a  <Y'  actress  in  France." 

He  went  back  with  her  to  the  stage-door  and  there  bade  her 
good  night  quite  as  he  might  have  said  it  to  any  other  girl. 


358  VICTORIOUS 


All  he  would  do,  he  promised  himself,  would  be  to  be  her 
friend.  In  that  there  was  no  harm;  he  owed  it  to  her.  As 
for  going  with  her  unchaperoned  into  the  hills — well,  people 
did  that  sort  of  thing,  especially  American  people,  in  war 
time  France.  She  could,  she  said,  arrange  "leave"  and  thereby 
have  permission  to  wear  mufti  instead  of  uniform.  He  would 
consider  nothing  concerning  her  save  her  friendship.  But, 
when  he  went  next  morning  to  see  McGregor,  he  did  not  think 
it  necessary  to  mention  to  the  contractor  her  presence  in  Aix. 
That  would  be  soon  enough  known ;  to  speak  of  it  would  be  to 
invite  the  renewal  of  a  discussion  doubtless  well  intended,  yet 
scarcely  delicate. 

McGregor,  finishing  a  thoroughly  American  breakfast,  was 
propped  against  many  pillows  in  a  very  French  bed.  San- 
shine  poured  in  through  the  windows,  enhancing  the  pink  rose 
buds  of  the  Chicagoan's  nightgown. 

"You're  early,  young  man,"  said  McGregor. 

"Army  habits,"  Andy  explained. 

"Have  a  cigar.  They're  over  there  on  the  bureau.  I  smoked 
the  last  of  the  lot  I  put  on  the  bed-table,  last  night." 

"No,  thanks,"  said  Andy.    "I  just  came  in  to  say  good-by." 

"Good-by?"  McGregor's  pudgy  face  grew  grave.  "Why, 
you  don't  go  till  to-night,  do  you  ?" 

"Something's  turned  up.  I'm  going  to  be  away  all  day." — 
Youth  is  involuntarily  a  little  careless  of  maturity. — "So  I've 
checked  my  kit  at  the  gare,  and  I'll  go  right  there  when  I  get 
back  to  town."  Then  Andy  saw  how  McGregor  was  taking  it, 
and  his  heart  smote  him.  "I'm  sorry." 

The  elder  man  asked  no  awkward  questions.  He  held  out 
his  right  hand,  and  Andy  took  it,  and  then  McGregor  put  his 
free  arm  about  the  young  fellow's  shoulder. 

"You  didn't  mind  me  saying  that  to  you  last  night?" 

Andy  shook  his  head.    It  was  the  time  for  a  generous  lie. 

"And  you'ra  sure  you  wouldn't  like  that — well,  that  com 
mission  ?" 


VICTORIOUS  359 

"Not  that  one/'  said  Andy,  smiling  his  thanks.  "Quite 
sure/' 

Neither  spoke  for  a  second.    Then  McGregor  said : 

"Take  care  of  yourself/' 

"I  will/'  said  Andy. 

"There's  no  sense,"  said  McGregor,  "in  running  unneces 
sary  risks.  So  don't  be  a  damn'  fool." 

That  was  his  farewell. 

VI 

And  Andy  and  Sylvia  drove  up  through  the  hills  that  rose 
into  mountains — drove  in  a  low  open  carriage  that  gave  them 
the  freedom  of  the  queer  villages  and  the  wide  woodlands  and 
the  roadside  sanctuaries — drove  behind  a  horse  that  did  not 
tire  and  a  driver  that  could  crack  his  whip  in  the  romantic 
style.  Tac  sat,  like  a  statue  of  Watchfulness,  on  the  front 
seat,  and  they  talked  as  a  man  and  a  woman  do  when  they  are 
real  friends — which  is  to  say  merrily  and  about  everything 
save  the  thing  that  happens  to  be  nearest  to  their  hearts. 

They  dismissed  the  carriage  on  the  summit  of  the  last  hill 
and  prevailed  on  an  ancient  inn-keeper  to  make  them  a  won 
derful  omelette,  which  they  ate,  to  the  accompaniment  of  a 
no  less  wonderful  white  wine  of  the  country,  in  a  little  mom 
of  their  own,  although  there  was  not  another  visitor  about  the 
place.  They  laughed  a  good  deal — Andy  could  still  forget 
horrors  when  he  felt  that  horrors  should  be  forgotten.  Sylvia 
recounted,  at  his  urging,  incidents  of  her  tours  among  the  sol 
diers,  and  made  Andy  tell  her,  with  many  blushing  hesita 
tions,  a  little  about  his  trench-experiences  and,  unhesitatingly, 
a  great  deal  about  his  regiment  and  his  company  and  about 
Johnson,  Levy  and  Elynn,  about  Chrissly,  wounded  Davies 
and  Campbell  and  poor  Winters,  and  what  fine  fellows  they: 
were,  and  how — for  so  Andy's  memory  saw  it — they  had  al 
ways  been  kind  to  him  and  treated  him  well. 

The  late  luncheon  over  and  the  slow  coffee  consumed — who 
would  want  liqueurs  on  such  a  day? — they  went  to  the  porcK 
that  overhung  the  mountainside  and  looked  down  at  Le  Bour- 
get.  Enfolded  in  perfumes  wafted  upward  by  the  invigorating 


360  VICTORIOUS 

firs,  the  picture  was  a  study  in  green  and  blue.  The  sloping 
acres  of  vineyards  immediately  beneath  them  were  from  here 
invisible ;  the  sky  was  a  sheer  cloudless  azure,  the  great  steeps 
opposite  embowered  heights  of  verdure;  the  long  lake,  with 
now  and  then  a  tiny  boat  upon  it,  mirrored  at  once  the  tints  of 
wood  and  sky. 

Sylvia  looked  with  the  wind  in  her  hair  and  wonder  in  her 
eyes.  Andy,  beside  her,  dreamed  that  the  war  was  at  a  tri 
umphant  end :  it  was  the  happiest  afternoon  of  his  life. 

Clambering  downward,  there  were  times  when  he  had  to 
take  her  hand  and  help  her  over  this  or  that  rock,  around  the 
sides  of  this  or  that  abrupt  declivity.  Not  till  then  did  some 
thing  of  his  old  feelings  reassert  itself  frankly  in  the  old 
guise,  and  only  then  bring  with  it  the  puzzle  and  pain  in  which 
he  had  thought  they  ended. 

The  excursionists  were  silent,  but  forest-birds  broke  their 
silence  with  silver  song;  golden  shafts  of  sunlight  fell  straight 
from  heaven  through  the  primeval  trees;  their  feet  sank 
softly  into  mossy  beds,  and  there  came  to  them  the  shy  scur- 
ryings  of  startled  animals  moving  too  quickly  to  be  seen.  The 
heart  of  the  springtime  beat  audibly,  the  rising  of  its  new 
blood  was  all  but  heard,  and  when  they  reached  the  long 
empty  road  that  ran  beside  the  water,  when  the  descending 
sun  cast  shadows  far  ahead  of  them,  both,  though  neither  at 
once  guessed  it,  were  drawing  near  a  forgetful  surrender  to 
those  cosmic  forces  that  use  a  superhuman  tolerance  to  bend 
all  things  to  their  will. 

The  sun,  as  they  walked,  sank  lower.  The  first  pale  star  of 
early  evening  hung  above  the  lake;  there  was  a  hush  solemn, 
religious,  over  hillside  and  water;  tempting  the  soul  out  of 
the  body,  the  air  was  sweet  with  wild  flowers.  Andy  found 
himself  saying  to  her: 

"McGregor's  in  Aix.  He  had  a  talk  with  me  last  night — a 
long  talk." 

The  familiar  wing  of  perplexity  ruffled  her  level  brows. 

"You  wrote  me,  before  you — went  away,"  she  said,  "that 
you  couldn't  see  me.  I  didn't  try  to  see  you,  after  that,  until 
I  heard  that  you  were  going." 


.VICTORIOUS  361 

"And  then,"  said  Andy,  "you  didn't  tell  me  why  you  hadn't 
tried  to  see  me." 

"Wasn't  your  note/'  she  asked,  "reason  enough?" 

There  came  that  instant  when  the  day  and  night  are  one; 
the  world  stood  still ;  the  air  was  an  air  of  revelation. 

"Reason  enough,"  Andy  ruefully  admitted,  "and  I'm 
ashamed  of  it." 

She  was  looking  straight  ahead  of  her,  up  the  white  ribbon 
of  the  road  between  the  indigo  waters  and  the  purple  hills. 
"I — I  thought  it  might  be  wise,  if  we — if  we  didn't  meet 
again." 

They  went  on  walking.  There  was  a  poignant  ache  in 
Andy's  heart :  he  did  not  attempt  the  difficult  task  of  discover 
ing  the  reason  for  what  he  said : 

"But  you  did  come  to  see  me  at  the  station." 

Her  voice  fell.    "To  tell  you  good-by,"  said  Sylvia. 

"McGregor's  in  Aix,"  the  boy  repeated.  "Last  night  he 
had  a  long  talk  with  me." 

Her  eyes  remained  fixed  on  the  white-and-purple  distance, 
but  he  saw  that  they  were  swimming.  Her  face  was  nobly 
beautiful,  and  yet  pathetically  girlish. 

"Mr.  McGregor,"  she  said,  "has  been  kind  to  me.  He 
helped  me  to  send  some  money  to  my  mother,  Ainslee  Ray- 
burn,  in  ISTew  Orleans.  Oh,  he  thought  the  'y'  was  queer,  I 
know,  but  Raeburn  looks  so  much  better  on  a  program! 
— My  mother,"  she  added,  "has  not  had  a  happy  life.  She  has 
to  have  an  attendant.  I  have  never — never  been  able  to  get 
used  to  the  idea  of  sending  her  to  an — an  institution." 

As  Sylvia  spoke,  the  sun  dropped  behind  the  western  hills, 
and,  with  that  suddenness  with  which  such  changes  take  place 
along  Le  Bourget,  the  insect  chorus  rose  from  the  woods,  and 
all  the  lanterns  of  the  night  were  lighted  in  the  sky. 

"Sylvia!" 

rAs  one  born  to  the  Church,  but  turned  to  doubt,  unknow 
ingly  might  wander  by  dark  into  a  vast  cathedral  and 
there,  without  forewarning,  see  some  miracle  of  modern  me 
chanics  flash  into  light  every  candle  on  the  high  altar,  reveal 
ing  the  crucifix  above,  the  veiled  host  below,  and  as  he,  so 


362  VICTORIOUS 

seeing,  must  feel  his  knees  bend  under  him  and  his  head  bow 
while,  though  reason  remains,  faith  returns  and  rises  above  all 
reason,  so,  at  this  moment,  Andy  Brown.  Only  error  can 
breed  error ;  where  there  was  the  child,  there  must  the  dam  be : 

"Garcia — that  night — one  night — I'd  started  to  his  rooms 
— about  those  letters — I  saw  you  come  out — " 

"I  went  there  to  get  them.  I  got  them.  I  sent  them  to 
you — afterward/' 

Close  by,  in  a  green  thicket,  a  nightingale  burst  into  song. 

Under  the  light  of  the  stars,  she  stood  before  him,  pale,  reso 
lute  and  pure.  Under  the  music  of  the  bird,  the  echo  of  her 
voice  surrounded  her — the  meaning  of  her  words  smote  him  at 
once  with  shame  and  exaltation.  He  saw  her  as  enraptured 
peasants  at  the  roadside-shrines  along  this  lake  had  seen, 
rising  from  the  passion  of  their  prayers,  the  likenesses  of 
those  whom  they  besought ;  the  dew  sparkled  in  her  lashes  and 
her  hair:  hers  were  the  eyes  of  high  adventure,  her  gaze  the 
gaze  of  excellent  duty;  it  needed  only  the  poetry  that  he  could 
never  write,  but  must  always  live,  to  see  the  gleam  of  the 
casque  and  the  corselet  of  the  Maid.  .  .  . 

"Sylvia!" 

"He  wanted  me  to  watch  you,  and  I  thought,  if  I  pretended 
to,  I  could  help  save  you  from  him." 

Her  voice  caught.  She  turned  her  head  quickly  from  him. 
She  clenched  her  slender  hands  at  her  sides. 

He  had  wronged  her  horribly,  and  now,  when  he  was  going 
away,  he  knew  the  truth.  .  .  . 

More  truths  than  one,  for  he  knew  also— 
But  it  was  too  late  now.  It  was  too  late. 

In  the  starlight,  the  scent  of  the  wild  flowers  grew  sweeter. 
The  song  of  the  nightingale  ravished  his  ears  and  maddened 
his  heart. 

His  slim  young  figure  quivered.  He  drew  very  close.  He 
put  out  his  appealing  hands.  "Can  you  ever  forgive  me  ?" 

The  bird  was  calling — calling. 

"There's  nothing  to  forgive,  Andy." 

He  forgot  all  his  awkwardness;  he  forgot  one-half  of  his 


VICTORIOUS  363 

awe.  He  told  her  everything.  He  laid  bare  his  earliest 
dreams.  He  gave  no  ear  to  her  protestations.  With  the  elo 
quence  of  utter  self -disregard,  he  painted  her  as  she  had  been 
to  him  before  ever  he  saw  her — when  first  he  saw  her — through 
the  days  of  his  bitter  fight  against  governmental  procrastina 
tion  and  heartbreaking  mismanagement — through  the  no  more 
bitter  nights  in  the  trenches. 

"Please,"  she  pleaded — "please.    Fm  just  a  woman,  Andy." 

But  he  would  not  hear. 

"I  want  you  to  know  it ;  I  just  want  you  to  know  it,  that's 
all.  It  was  you  made  me  everything  I  am — everything  that's 
any  good  at  all." 

"You  mustn't." 

"It  was  you." 

"I  can't  stand  it !" 

"I  tell  you,  it  was  you.  You  gave  me  the  strength  to  go  up 
against  that  gang ;  it  was  you  gave  me  at  last  the  faith  to  en 
list.  First  you  made  me  so  I  could  risk  disgrace  from  the 
press-division,  and  I  risked  it ;  then,  when  the  need  came,  you 
said  the  Cause  was  bigger  than  its  mistakes,  and  I  knew  that 
was  true — " 

"Andy!   Don't,  Andy!" 

"I  will.  I  must.  This  once  I've  got  to.  You've  been  every 
thing — everything — everything  for  me  and  to  me.  You're  a 
million  miles  above  me,  but  I  have  to  let  you  know — let  you 
know  and  then  leave  you:  I — I  worship  you,  and  I — I  love 
you,  Sylvia!" 

"With  the  sound  of  that  last  phrase,  he  came  to  abrupt  pause. 
A  silence  descended.  She  had  drawn  from  him — put  up  a 
white  hand  before  her  lowered  eyes.  Even  the  song  of  the  bird 
ceased ;  lake,  hills  and  sky  seemed  to  be  holding  their  breath. 

Ever  so  slightly  she  swayed.  He  thought  she  would  fall; 
he  caught  her  waist. 

"Don't — don't  love  me,"  she  whispered;  but  as  she  let  fall 
her  hand,  he  felt  her  velvet  fingers  chance  to  touch  his  hair, 
and  that  light  touch  shattered  the  last  armor  of  his  restraint. 

He  seized  the  hand.    He  dragged  her  to  him ;  he  bent  back 


364:  VICTORIOUS 

her  golden  head ;  he  forced  her  wistful  face  toward  his.  With 
a  glad  cry,  he  bent  to  her,  and  she,  crying  out  with  him,  flung 
her  arms  around  his  neck,  and  their  lips  were  joined. 

Sylvia  wrenched  herself  free. 

"No,  no,  no!"  she  said.  And  the  iron  doors  of  the  impos 
sible  seemed  to  clang  between  them  as  she  said  it. 

He  was  plunged  from  staggering  delight  against  stagger 
ing  dismay.  "You  don't  mean — " 

"I  shouldn't  have  let  you.  I  mean" — again  her  white  hands 
hid  her  face — "I  mean  I'm  ashamed." 

He  tried  to  pull  her  hands  away.   "But  Sylvia — " 

"Oh,  I  can  never  forgive. myself  1"  she  moaned. 

"For  making  me  happy?  Sylvia!"  He  thought  he  under 
stood.  "There's  somebody  else?" 

But  she  shook  her  head. 

"Then  why — "  He  felt  as  if  a  chill  wind  had  blown  down 
the  valley.  "I  see:  I  know:  of  course,  you  can't  love  me. 
How  could  you  love  me?" 

There  came,  under  the  stars,  a  great  light  upon  her  face. 

"Andy,"  she  said,  "you're  worthy  of  the  best  woman's 
love;  but  you  told  me  a  little  while  ago  you  thought,  once,  I 
was  a  kind  of  Joan  of  Arc — " 

"I  always  thought  so;"  and  he  vowed,  "I  always  will." 

"I'm  not  that.  I'm  only  a  very  ordinary  sort  of  woman — 
Just  like  most,  Andy — nothing  great,  or  fine,  or  wonderful — " 

"I  know  better." 

" — but  I'm  your  friend,  Andy.  Can't  we  let  it  go  at  that? 
Can't  you?  Can't  you  let  me  be  just  your  friend?" 

She  put  out  both  her  hands  to  him. 

"If  that's  the  most—"  he  said. 

"It  must  be,  Andy — so  long,  so  long  as  we're  in  France." 

"Sylvia!" 

A  raucous  whistle  tore  the  air. 

"Your  train !"  she  cried. 

"Not  yet,"  he  said,  straining  his  eyes  to  search  hers  and 
pledge  his  love  to  them.  "There's  time.  It's  miles  away. 
The  sound  carries  far;  I've  often  heard  it.  And  the  train 
waits  fifteen  minutes  at  Aix.  And  Sylvia—" 


VICTORIOUS  365 

He  drew  her  toward  him,  a  little  apart  from  the  roadway. 
He  would  not  be  resisted.  "You  mean/'  he  demanded,  "that 
afterward  you'll — " 

"Oh,  Andy,  don't  you  see?  I  mustn't  love  you  now.  I 
came  to  France  to  work ;  it  was  a  sort  of  vow  to  myself — " 

"Is  that  all?"  His  voice  was  loud  with  relief.  "But  you 
love  me?  You  do?  You  do?" 

He  had  her  face  close  to  his,  her  eyes  upturned  to  his 
again. 

"It's  forever  and  ever,"  he  whispered. 

"Forever  and  ever — after  the  war  I" 

VII 

In  the  shadows  outside  the  station-yard,  she  stopped. 

"I'll  not  go  in,"  she  said. 

"No,"  said  Andy. 

People  were  hurrying  to  and  fro.  There  were  shouts  and 
laughter. 

"It's  better  to  say  it  out  here." 

"To  say  it  out  here,  yes." 

"Oh,  Andy,  I'm  afraid,"  she  said.  A  blue  electric  lamp 
sputtered  into  life  and  shone  on  her  face.  A  little,  crooked 
bmile  twisted  her  lips. 

He  had  to  hold  back  his  tears.  Somehow  a  new  responsi 
bility  had  come  to  him.  He  ought  to  stay  and  look  after  her. 
She  was  very  fragile  in  the  lamplight,  and  he  so  strong  in 
his  khaki. 

"God  bless  you,"  said  Sylvia,  with  something  like  a  sob. 

He  wanted  to  kneel  on  the  pavement.  He  had  her  blessing ; 
he  had  her  love.  He  held  her  close  for  a  long  moment.  He 
wanted  to  protect  her. 

Then  it  was  as  if,  by  a  miracle,  she  again  protected  him. 
It  was  as  if,  again,  there  was  little  of  her  that  was  woman, 
and  what  was  not  woman  was  indeed  the  Cause.  For  the 
sure  triumph  of  that  cause  he  was  going  back  to  fight — she 
wanted  him  to  feel  that  way.  Love  he  would  forever  give 
her,  but  a  worship  also,  which  was  more  than  even  love.  Aft 
erward — . 


366  VICTOKIOUS 

"Good-by,"  she  said. 

Reverently,  he  kissed  her  hand. 

"You'll  always  be  Joan  of  Arc  to  me/'  said  Andy. 

VIII 

Carriage-doors  were  banging.    The  guards  called  shrilly. 

He  dashed  from  her.  An  excited  railway-servant  flung  him 
his  kit.  He  ran  through  the  gate  and  stormed  a  car. 

The  train  pulled  out  of  the  shed.  Andy  put  his  face  against 
the  cold  window-pane. 

He  saw  her  standing  where  he  had  left  her,  under  the  light 
of  the  sputtering  lamp. 

Never  once  looking  up,  never  once  guessing  that  she  was 
visible  to  him,  Sylvia  was  pressing  to  her  lips  the  hand  that 
his  lips  had  touched.  Her  bosom  tossed,  the  tears  rained 
down  her  cheeks;  she  kissed  her  fingers  where  his  kiss  had 
been. 

Andy  wrenched  the  window.  It  would  not  open,  and  she 
did  not  look  up. 

IX 

Two  weeks  later,  when  his  regiment  was  again  in  billets, 
Andy  received  a  hurried  note  from  Sylvia.  It  was  addressed 
to  her  "Dear-Friend-until-after-the-war"  and  signed  "Yours 
affectionately."  It  said  that  her  work  in  France  was  draw 
ing  to  a  close,  that  she  was  soon  to  sail  for  home,  but  that 
she  would  like  to  see  Andy  before  leaving  and  would,  indeed, 
be  playing  on  the  next  evening  after  he  received  the  missive, 
at  a  town  only  twenty  miles  behind  that  in  which  he  then 
happened  to  be. 

Andy  asked  permission  to  go.  He  would  be  away  but  twen 
ty-four  hours,  and  Captain  Bates  seemed  to  think  the  re 
quest  reasonable.  It  was  Garcia  who,  hearing  of  it,  interfered. 
He  said  that  Private  Brown  had,  one  night,  been  negligent  in 
his  guard-duty,  and  so  Andy  remained  with  his  regiment. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

HOW  CHKISSLY  CAME  TO  MIRANDE-LA-FALOISE,  AND  HOW 
ANDY  STAYED  THERE 

ONE  balmy  night  of  stars,  cross-eyed  Corporal  Johnson 
came  running  back  to  the  ruined  cottage  in  which  his  squad 
was  quartered. 

"Full  kits!"  he  cried.    "We're  goin'  to  move." 

Campbell  and  Davies,  both  of  whom  had  recovered  from 
the  effects  of  their  wounds,  set  up,  as  scarred  men  have  the 
right  to  do,  an  echo  of  complaint. 

"Move  again?  Where  the  hell  are  they  goin'  to  send  us 
now?" 

"I  never  seen  such  a  bunch.  They  don't  know  their  own 
minds.  They  don't  know  what  they  want." 

Nobody  knew  anything  certainly,  but  every  sort  of  rumor 
spread  through  the  village:  they  were  going  into  new 
trenches,  the  American  Army  was  about  to  take  over  Verdun, 
the  British  front  was  broken,  and  this  Yankee  division  was 
to  be  hurried  to  the  rescue.  A  hundred  reports  came  from 
nowhere  and  went  everywhere. 

Within  half  an  hour  the  roads  leading  to  the  nearest  rail 
way-station  were  choked  by  marching  men.  Staff-cars  tore 
down  the  center  of  the  way,  the  captains  giving  quick  com 
mands  that  the  lieutenants  and  non-commissioned  officers  re 
peated  just  in  time  to  prevent  their  cursing  men  from  court 
ing  disaster.  A  sluggish  flood  of  trucks  lumbered  by.  Andy's 
regiment  joined  the  march  and  melted  into  it. 

They  came  to  the  railway-town,  but  the  big  square  in  front 
of  the  station  overflowed  soldiers,  and  late  comers  could  not 
get  near  it.  Hoarse  voices  shouted.  Men  flung  down  their 
arms  and  accouterments  and  went  to  sleep  upon  them,  only 

367 


368  VICTORIOUS 

to  be  roused  at  once  and  moved,  protesting  loudly,  a  few  yards 
to  left  or  right.  Whistles  blew  and  bells  rang. 

"If  the  Heinies  don't  know  what  we're  doin'  it's  no  fault 
of  ours,"  grumbled  Chrissly. 

"And  if  our  brass-hats  does  know,"  said  Campbell,  "I'm 
a  liar." 

Slowly  it  developed  that  most  of  the  soldiers  were  to  be 
loaded  into  motor-trucks,  and  the  turmoil  of  that  loading, 
the  loss  of  platoons  and  companies,  the  piling  into  one  con 
veyance  in  obedience  to  one  order  only  to  be  tumbled  out 
again  in  obedience  to  another — these  things  gave  to  the  help 
less  participants  a  sense  of  nightmare.  Hours  were  lost  in 
confusion,  energy  passed  into  hysteria.  It  was  with  loyal  sat 
isfaction  that  Andy  observed  how  his  leathern  Captain  Bates 
retained  soldierly  calm. 

Finally,  some  of  the  trucks  were  loaded  and  started  away. 
That  bearing  Andy  and  his  immediate  companions  forced  a 
slow  passage  among  threatening  men  still  unplaced.  It 
stopped,  went  on  again,  stopped.  It  got  clear  of  the  square 
and  had  to  wait  for  other  trucks.  The  other  trucks  came,  and 
the  caravan  left  the  town  and  received  orders  to  wait  upon 
another  caravan.  Morning  was  on  the  fields  when  the  journey 
really  began.  So  many  of  the  men  as  could,  filled  the  open 
end  of  the  truck,  those  behind  making  those  in  front  sit  down 
and  kneel  down,  in  order  to  provide  some  glimpses  of  the 
countryside  and  to  wave  to  the  men  in  the  truck  that  fol 
lowed;  thus  they  saw  fields  and  villages  bounce  by  them. 

Andy  was  uncomfortable,  and  so  were  his  companions.  At 
the  last  moment,  kits  had  been  reduced  to  the  fighters7  barest 
necessities.  The  lice  and  fieas  were  active;  the  trucks  jolted; 
Ryan  said  that  the  supply  trains  had  been  cut,  and  that  there 
would  be  little  rations,  if  any.  There  was  no  tobacco. 

"Know  where  we're  headed  for?"  Johnson  asked  of  the 
first  sergeant. 

Ryan  didn't  know.  "I  heard  one  colonel  say  it  was  some 
where  between  thirty  and  forty  miles." 

Even  above  the  roar  of  the  camions,  there  rose  persistent 
from  the  distance  the  low  rumble  of  guns. 


.VICTORIOUS  369 

II 

At  a  hilltop  they  were  told  to  get  out  and  march.  All  the 
roads  below  them,  converging  behind  a  high  hill,  were  full 
of  soldiers,  cars  and  wagons,  some  moving  slowly  forward, 
others  mixing  in  whirlpools,  the  men  swearing,  the  wheels 
locked,  officers  gesticulating  wildly.  The  ways  were  full  of 
ruts;  dust  rose  in  choking  clouds;  everybody  coughed.  Now 
and  then  an  infantryman  would  twist  his  ankle  and  fall  out 
of  line.  Some  ran  about  like  juvenile  picnickers  that  have 
lost  their  parents.  Broken  sentences,  accepted  as  inspired 
truths,  passed  along: 

"'Tain't  trenches.  We're  goin'  to  have  the  real  thing  at 
last." 

'The  Boche've  broke  through  up  that  way  near  a  lot  of  vil 
lages  where  the  people've  went  back.  We're  goin'  in  to  stop 
the  advance." 

"They  say  we're  goin'  to  have  a  hell  of  a  time:  ten  divi 
sions  against  us." 

"They  say  our  artillery  ain't  got  enough  shells  to  sup 
port  us." 

"They  say  we  don't  know  nothin'  about  the  Heinies  be 
cause  we  ain't  got  a  single  scoutin'  plane  with  us." 

The  enemy  was  none  too  far  away ;  his  guns  grew  momen 
tarily  more  clearly  audible;  but  nobody  seemed  really  to  care 
about  the  inequalities  of  the  possible  conflict.  They  could 
win  against  any  numbers  and  under  any  disadvantages.  The 
great  joyous  fact  was  that  there  was  to  be  a  "real  scrap,"  by 
which  was  meant  an  open  battle.  Chrissly  summarized  the 
division's  sentiments : 

"It's  our  chance't,  Andy!   It's  our  big  chance't!" 

Dusk  at  length  fell,  and  the  officers'  flash-lamps  came  out. 

Andy's  rifle  bruised  his  shoulder,  but  he  began  to  sing. 
In  a  high  clear  voice  he  sang  The  Marseillaise,  and  his  tired 
comrades  joined  him,  until  Captain  Bates  sharply  com 
manded  silence. 


370  VICTORIOUS 

in 

They  swung  into  a  village  street,  about  which  there  was 
something  familiar  to  Andy.  He  had  missed  the  name  on  the 
plaque;  so  had  every  one  near  him.  Twin  rows  of  cottages, 
clean  and  thrifty,  rose  on  either  hand ;  fertile  fields  fell  away 
behind  these,  and  what  must  generally  have  been  a  little 
creek,  but  what  far-away  rains  had  now  swollen  to  the  size 
of  a  small  river,  ran  through  the  meadows.  Save  that  shops 
were  closed  and  that  the  men  were  marching,  there  was  noth 
ing  of  war  about  the  place.  A  few  cottagers  stood  along  the 
curb,  and,  at  sight  of  them,  the  soldiers  became  more  erect, 
their  steps  more  swinging.  In  spite  of  the  enjoined  silence, 
Flynn,  who  had  a  sprig  of  green  thrust  into  his  rifle-barrel, 
began  to  chant  the  old  song: 

"For  we  won't  be  home  until  mor-ning.   .   .    ." 

Some  staff-officers  were  grouped  in  a  doorway:  the  men's 
heads  went  up;  they  should  have  been  physically  worn  out 
by  their  journey;  they  were  sleepless,  stiff,  footsore;  their 
uniforms  were  white  with  dust,  their  hands  and  faces  black 
ened  ;  yet  they  were  happy. 

Andy  saw  before  him  at  the  end  of  the  street  a  quite  for 
midable  house,  an  old  inn  that,  in  this  village  where,  it  was 
evident,  remained  even  traces  of  Roman  days,  dated  from 
medieval  times  and  that  displayed  for  sign  the  lilies  of  French 
royalty.  Then  he  remembered:  this  was  Mirande-la-Faloise, 
at  which,  so  long  ago,  he  had  waited  for  the  train.  He  had 
no  sooner  realized  it  than  a  woman — a  splendid,  dusky,  pan- 
therine  woman — ran  out  of  the  inn  and  into  the  ranks: 
Leonie  flung  her  arms  about  Chrissly  amid  the  good-natured 
laughter  of  his  fellows.  .  .  . 

Andy  heard  the  passing  colonel  complain  to  Captain 
Bates : 

"Why  in  thunder  haven't  they  sent  these  civilians  out  of 
here?" 

"God  knows,"  said  the  captain. 


VICTORIOUS  371 

"Well/'  muttered  the  colonel,  "it's  too  late  now." 

His  regiment  rested  in  the  village,  and  Andy  noticed  that 
the  colonel  and  some  of  his  officers  were  being  conducted  by 
cottagers  around  the  place  and  across  the  fields  toward  the 
woods  that  lay  a  half-mile  beyond  the  inn.  They  seemed  to 
be  observing  the  ground  and  judging  its  martial  possibil 
ities,  as  well  as  the  scanty  light  permitted. 

Chrissly  secured  a  stolen  quarter  of  an  hour  with  Leonie. 
Andy  got  some  bread  and  wine  from  her  and  dozed  against 
a  house-wall.  Past  the  outskirts  of  Mirande-la-Faloise,  myr 
iads  of  marching  men  and  army-trains  pressed  inexorably 
northward.  There  was  an  air-alarm  and  some  activity  on 
the  part  of  rapidly  mounted  anti-aircraft  guns.  The  sounds 
of  heavy  cannonading  seemed  to  draw  nearer. 

That  night  the  regiment  deployed  from  the  line  of  march. 
It  crossed  the  fields,  went  through  the  woods  and  took  a  road 
that  ran  around  other  fields  and  into  hills;  but  then  it  came 
hurriedly  back  to  the  village.  Eiders  had  met  its  advance- 
guard  and  delivered  messages.  All  the  succeeding  night  was 
passed  in  Mirande-la-Faloise. 

Andy  slept  on  the  floor  in  a  cottage,  with  the  other  mem 
bers  of  his  platoon.  He  slept  badly,  because  the  cannonading 
increased  in  violence.  He  was  awakened  at  dawn  by  an  up 
roar  of  distraught  men  hastening  pellmell  through  the  street 
and  away  from  the  direction  in  which  he  knew  the  front  to 
be — strange  men  in  blue-gray  with  sweat  and  blood  upon 
them. 

Somewhere  a  part  of  the  retiring  first  line  had  crumbled. 
The  Germans  were  tearing  through.  They  were  upon  the 
hills.  They  were  coming  toward  this  village. 

IV 

Andy  was  one  of  a  scurrying  crowd,  of  which  each  member 
was  seeking  his  own  company,  his  own  squad,  and  all  were 
being  sworn  at  by  excited  officers.  Men  were  buckling  their 
stiff  belts  as  they  ran.  Sergeants  shouted.  Captains  yelled 
commands. 


372  VICTORIOUS 

"Where  the  hell's  our  artillery?"  somebody  asked. 

And  somebody  answered :  "They're  in  the  right  place,  but 
they  haven't  got  the  shells." 

More  commands  were  given,  and  the  non-commissioned 
officers  seemed  to  divine  their  meaning.  A  column  that  in 
cluded  Andy  tramped  into  the  fields  behind  the  inn,  resolved 
itself  into  a  line  spread  wide  in  extended  order.  It  passed 
through  the  woods  to  the  other  fields  and  came  in  sight  of 
the  hills  beyond. 

Out  of  the  sides  of  those  hills  burst  a  biting  rattle. 

Arrived  in  the  open,  the  regiment,  dripping  from  its  re 
cent  immersion,  stopped  uncertainly.  Andy  saw  a  man  drop 
his  rifle,  throw  his  hands  up,  pitch  headlong.  Another's  legs 
bent  under  him,  and  he  gently  collapsed.  A  shouted  word 
came  from  up  the  line.  Captain  Bates  gave  the  signal: 

"Charge !" 

At  what?  At  nothing  but  some  hills  out  of  which  came 
bullets,  a  crisscross  rain  of  bullets,  which  swept  the  wide 
unprotected  fields  of  approach. 

They  ran.  They  fell.  They  got  up  again — some  of  them 
— and  ran  on.  Twice,  while  lying  down,  they  fired.  The  ma 
chine-guns'  bullets  whizzed  overhead  like  angry  bees.  Lieu 
tenant  Graaberg  received  a  scalp-wound  and  swore  cheerfully 
at  the  blood  that  drenched  his  face,  but  could  be  observed 
shaking  his  blond  head  when  Captain  Bates  told  him  to  go 
back.  You  could  now  see  the  flash  that  preceded  the  explo 
sions.  The  hills  were  a  little  nearer,  but  very  little. 

Bleeding  men,  mostly  silent,  but  some  howling,  began  to 
turn  back  and  reel  toward  the  rear,  their  faces  grotesquely 
contorted  by  pain.  Others  fell,  too  badly  wounded  to  move. 
Some  were  killed  outright.  The  extended  line  ran  on. 

Andy's  breath  came  in  short  gasps  that  cut  his  throat.  He 
no  longer  tried  to  avoid  the  fallen.  At  first  he  had  recognized 
this  one  or  that,  but  now  he  recognized  none.  There  was  no 
time  to  care  for  any;  all  that  could  must  continue  to  go  for 
ward.  Anybody  might  be  the  next  to  be  hit. 

There  came  an  increased  rain  from  the  machine-guns.  It 
seemed  a  solid  mass  of  lead.  The  long  line  wavered. 


VICTORIOUS  373 

"Go  on!  Go  on!"  yelled  Captain  Bates.  His  wiry  figure 
bounced  up  and  down.  What  else  he  said  could  not  be  heard. 
He  caught  a  turning  soldier  by  the  collar  and  shook  him  as 
a  pedagogue  shakes  a  recalcitrant  pupil. 

Chrissly  was  beside  Andy. 

"We've  got  to  go  on/'  said  Chrissly.  "There's  Leonie  back 
there.  They  mustn't  git  to  Leonie." 

Graaberg,  wiping  the  blood  from  his  blue  eyes,  ran  up  and 
down  among  the  bullets,  persuading  the  men.  Something 
struck  Andy's  rifle  and  shattered  its  stock;  at  once  Chrissly 
darted  to  a  dead  man,  secured  that  one's  fallen  rifle  and 
thrust  it  into  Andy's  eager  hands. 

"God  damn  it!"  bawled  Captain  Bates,  "come  on!" 

He  leaped  out  in  front  of  the  line,  and  the  line  stiffened. 

Then  three  runners  were  seen  approaching.  First  one  and 
then  another  fell,  but  the  third  reached  the  captain.  They 
bore  orders  to  retire. 


Somehow,  in  the  hailstorm  of  pelting  bullets,  the  with 
drawal  was  made,  and  made  without  disorder.  They  reached 
the  woods.  Complaining  now  that  they  had  not  been  per 
mitted  to  proceed,  that  they  had  been  risked  to  no  purpose, 
that  they  had  not  so  much  as  seen  one  of  the  enemy,  they 
passed  on  to  the  village. 

Here  they  were  to  make  a  stand. 

Andy's  company  was  assigned  to  the  Inn  of  the  Lilies.  The 
old  house  was  strong.  It  rose  above  the  swollen  stream  and 
looked  out  over  the  fields,  directly  upon  the  woods.  Captain 
Bates  stationed  some  men  outside,  behind  a  low  wall,  close 
beside  the  stream.  The  others  went  through  the  house  and 
brought  mattresses  to  the  windows  of  the  dining-room  that 
commanded  the  space  across  which  the  enemy  must  pass. 
An  old  peasant — Andy  wondered  if  this  could  be  Leonie's 
father — directed  the  search. 

Chrissly  hurried  through  the  house.  In  one  room,  a  white- 
haired  woman  was  quietly  knitting;  she  looked  at  him  with 


374  VICTOKIOUS 

dumb  reproachful  eyes,  but  said  nothing.  In  the  tap-room 
he  found  Leonie. 

"Go  I"  he  said.  "They  are  coming,  the  Boche.  You  must 
go." 

She  raised  to  him  the  damp  gaze  of  those  born  near  the  soil. 

"When  you  go,"  she  answered. 

"But,  Leonie—" 

Garcia  entered  and  ordered  him  back  to  the  dining-room. 

VI 

There  were  four  windows  here.  From  one  of  them  Andy 
and  Chrissly  watched  the  now  empty  fields  and  the  silent 
woods.  Lieutenant  Graaberg,  his  head  bandaged  and  his 
blond  hair  caked  with  blood,  stood  in  the  center,  a  pistol  in 
his  hand.  Down  the  stream,  now  whirled  this  way  and  now 
that,  floated  the  dead  body  of  a  grinning  doughboy, 

"Hold  your  ammunition,"  the  lieutenant  commanded. 
"Don't  fire  till  I  tell  you." 

For  a  long  time  the  men  crouching  behind  the  mattressed 
windows  saw  nothing.  Then  the  tree-trunks  of  the  woods 
seemed  to  move. 

One  of  the  men  at  the  river-wall  put  up  his  head.   Imme 
diately  there  was  a  shot.  He  fell  outspread ;  his  legs  twitched 
like  a  frog's;  he  lay  still.   A  comrade  jumped  up  and  fired 
blindly. 
'     "Stop  that !"  cried  Graaberg.   "Lie  down,  or—" 

A  gust  of  bullets  swept  from  the  woods  and  spattered  on  the 
walls  of  the  inn.  One  or  two  tiles  were  dislodged  and  crashed 
to  earth. 

"They're  comin' !"  cried  the  man  that  had  fired. 

A  long  line  of  gray  came  out  of  the  woods. 

"Hold  your  fire,"  cautioned  Graaberg.  He  was  smiling 
serenely.  "Wait  for  my  order." 

He  came  behind  the  kneeling  Andy,  who  bent  above  with 
rifle  ready,  every  nerve  aquiver.  The  lieutenant  peered  at 
the  advancing  line. 


VICTORIOUS  375 

A  second  followed  it,  and  a  third.    A  fourth  appeared. 

Campbell,  at  the  next  window,  said:  "There's  a  whole 
army  of  'em." 

"We  should  worry !"  laughed  Flynn. 

It  was  more,  however,  than  the  lonely  American  regiment 
had  counted  upon.  Graaberg  ran  out  of  the  room  and  re 
turned  with  Captain  Bates.  The  captain  gave  one  glance 
from  the  window. 

"Fire  at  will  I"  he  commanded. 

All  the  rifles  rang  out.  Men  were  seen  to  fall  from  the 
advancing  lines,  but  the  lines  came  on  as  if  at  parade.  No 
body  could  kill  enough  of  them :  so  much  was  at  once  clear. 
Here  was  a  fight  of  ten  to  one.  Captain  Bates  sent  Garcia 
on  an  errand  for  the  colonel. 

Andy  and  his  companions  kept  on  firing.  The  room  filled 
with  stifling  smoke.  The  advancing  lines  would  pause  to 
reply,  and  bullets  clattered  again  upon  the  walls.  Ibrahim 
Keshid,  the  Turk,  was  shot  in  the  face;  he  tottered  to  the 
center  of  the  room  and  fell  there ;  Graaberg  dragged  the  body 
out  of  the  way. 

There  was  an  explosion  overhead. 

"Shrapnel,"  said  Bates  to  Graaberg.  "They're  getting  the 
range.  They've  got  their  big  guns  back  of  the  hills.  They'll 
open  soon — and  we  can't  reply." 

The  body  of  a  man  fell  from  an  upper  window. 

Stripped  to  their  waists,  the  soldiers  in  the  dining-room 
were  firing  with  all  the  rapidity  at  their  command.  Dust  and 
smoke  made  a  darkness  cut  only  by  flashes  of  flame.  Sweat 
poured  from  faces  and  added  to  the  pungent  odor  of  the 
powder.  The  enemy  paused  and  replied  with  systematic  reg 
ularity  ;  they  shot  well :  Campbell  lay  in  a  pool  of  blood,  killed 
instantly;  near  him  a  comrade  was  struck  in  the  head  and 
his  brain  spattered  over  his  neighbor;  many  were  wounded, 
and  of  these  some  lay  moaning  horribly.  Stray  bullets  had 
broken  mirrors  and  shattered  the  walls;  the  floor  was  an 
ensanguined  clutter  of  broken  glass  and  plaster. 

Suddenly,  with  a  roar  to  which  the  explosion  of  the  shrap- 


376  VICTORIOUS 

nel  was  as  the  sound  of  a  mere  popgun,  a  great  shell  fell  en 
the  river-bank  and  sent  high  in  air  earth,  mud,  water  and 
the  stones  of  the  wall. 

Garcia  dived  into  the  room  from  the  street. 

"We're  to  go  I"  he  yelled  to  Captain  Bates.  "The  colonel 
says  nobody  could  hold  this  place.  The  whole  division's  fall 
ing  back  !v 

Three  more  explosions  shook  the  village. 

"Come  on!"  cried  Bates.  "In  order,  now.  There's  no 
hurry/' 

But  there  was  hurry.  As  he  spoke,  one  whole  side  of  the 
inn  collapsed  in  a  brain-splitting  roar. 

Chrissly  darted  for  the  tap-room.  Andy  resolved  on  one 
more  shot;  he  looked,  through  a  heavy  cloud,  at  the  fields 
outside.  Across  them  the  calm  lines  were  still  advancing. 
Behind  one  group,  he  saw  a  man  that  seemed  to  be  an  officer 
running  up  and  down,  Andy  fired,  and  the  officer  spun 
around  and  toppled  over. 

Then  all  the  regiment  was  in  the  street. 

VII 

All  the  regiment,  and,  it  at  first  seemed,  much  of  the  divi 
sion.  The  bitterness  of  defeat,  the  scourge  of  panic,  whipped 
them.  Those  who  had  accouterments  were  flinging  them  away. 
The  little  thoroughfare  was  a  ruck  of  swirling  men,  plunging 
animals,  snorting  motors.  The  rage  of  hundreds  rose  in  a 
chorus  of  cries  and  was  swept  away  upon  a  blast  of  disorder. 
The  shells  roared,  houses  were  smashed  to  splinters.  A 
mounted  officer,  whether  in  an  endeavor  to  rally  his  men 
or  to  escape,  rode  into  the  mob,  trampling  the  fugitives,  and 
was  unhorsed.  Andy  had  a  glimpse  of  Garcia  running  with 
his  head  down  and  his  hands  to  his  ears,  of  the  colonel  swear 
ing  and  cajoling.  Graaberg  seized  Garcia's  arm. 

"Take  your  hands  off  o'  me !"  shrieked  Garcia.  He  raised 
his  fist  and  beat  his  fellow  lieutenant  on  the  latter's  wounded 
iiead. 

The  vast  torrent  swirled  Andy  out  of  the  village. 


YICTOEIOUS  377 

"But  it's  not  the  end/'  he  kept  saying  over  and  over.  "It's 
not  the  end!  Something's  slipped,  that's  all.  We're  going 
to  win." 

Then  the  Germans  reached  the  village,  and,  from  its  point 
of  vantage,  began  to  pour  a  steady  rifle-fire  into  the  retreat 
ing  Americans.  Captain  Bates,  rallying  such  of  his  men  as 
he  could  find,  fell  beside  the  road ;  undei  a  spatter  of  bullets, 
Andy  darted  back,  picked  the  officer  up  and,  with  the  dead 
weight  across  his  shoulders,  resumed  his  retreat. 

As  he  did  so,  he  saw  the  glad  signs  of  order's  restoration. 
The  panic  had  been  short-lived,  and  the  colonel  of  Andy's 
regiment  had  checked  it.  He  quieted  the  men,  he  reawakened 
the  pride  that  only  inexperience  had  made  vulnerable.  Andy's 
last  glance  backward  showed  an  organized  rear-guard  pro 
tecting  the  retirement.  The  Germans  held  Mirande-la-Fa- 
loise,  but  they  would  come  no  farther. 

VIII 

There  were  strong  positions  behind  the  village,  and  to  these 
the  Americans  were  going.  Shells  shrieked  overhead.  Some 
exploded  among  the  fields  and  some,  scattering  men  and  mo 
tors,  in  the  road. 

Andy,  by  dint  of  many  questions,  obtained  news  of  a  field- 
hospital.  He  was  soon  part  of  a  separate  procession,  bound 
thither.  Some  of  the  wounded  hobbled  alone,  using  their 
rifles  as  crutches;  others  walked  with  their  arms  about  com 
panions'  necks,  or  were  carried  in  the  arms  of  less  injured 
men;  most  were  on  improvised  litters  or  regimental  stretch 
ers. 

The  exterior  of  the  white  farmhouse  toward  which  this 
march  directed  itself  was  like  the  outside  of  a  slaughter-house. 
Men  lay  on  the  reddened  grass,  some  dying,  some  that  had 
fainted,  others  in  every  variety  of  suffering.  Buckets  of 
bloody  water  stood  about,  and  even  amputated  arms  and  legs 
had  been  flung  among  the  maimed.  Fat  flies  buzzed  busily; 
a  low  murmur  of  suffering  quivered  on  the  heavy  air,  and 
out  of  the  open  door  came  a  breath  in  which  the  scent  of  an^ 


378  VICTOEIOUS 

esthetics  mixed  witH  the  reek  of  riven  flesh.  Among  those 
who  could  speak  there  was  an  outcry  against  the  paucity  of 
American  shells  that  had  made  this  slaughter  possible,  but 
more  expressed  only;  chagrin  at  the  defeat  and  most  predicted 
speedy  retaliation. 

"It's  lucky  my  trade's  a  bench-job/'  said  a  man  whose  legs 
were  destined  to  go. 

"I'll  hate  to  draw  a  pension,"  said  a  wan  boy,  shot  through 
the  middle :  "It's  taken  such  a  little  while  to  earn  it/' 

Andy  staggered  up  to  a  hurrying  surgeon  whose  arms 
dripped  from  a  score  of  operations. 

"What  you  got  there  ?"  asked  the  surgeon.  He  was  a  thin 
overworked  fellow,  wearing  tortoise-shell  goggles.  "Put  it 
down — put  it  down !" 

"Here  ?"  asked  Andy.  "On  the  ground  ?" 

"There's  no  room  inside." 

Very  gently  Andy  laid  his  burden  on  the  grass. 

The  goggled  surgeon  gave  one  look.  "You've  had  your 
work  for  nothing,"  he  declared:  "the  man's  dead" — and  he 
hurried  on  to  another  case. 

IX 

In  a  cottage  under  a  hill  Andy  found  the  remnants  of 
his  own  command,  and  found  it  busy  with  explanations  and 
excuses.  Everybody  was  sure  that  reenforcements  would  come 
up  during  the  night  and  that  Mirande-la-Faloise  would  be 
retaken  next  morning;  Levy  was  especially  convincing.  In 
Andy's  squad  only  Campbell  had  been  killed,  and  though 
Johnson  and  Flynn  were  hit,  their  wounds  were  superficial : 
they  would  fight  on  the  morrow :  in  order  to  be  certain  of  it, 
they  refused  to  go  to  report  to  the  medical-officers.  But 
Chrissly  was  missing. 

"Sure,  I  seen  him  go  down  with  a  bullet  in  his  head  just 
before  we  cleared  out  of  the  hotel"  said  Flynn. 

"No  you  didn't,"  said  big  Davies.  "He  was  standin'  right 
alongside  that  stable  before  the  shell  struck  it." 

Andy  remembered  Leonie's  presence  at  the  inn  and  said 


VICTOEIOUS  379 

nothing.  He  thought:  "Chrissly  remained  to  protect  her, 
and  has  paid  the  price." 

Overcome  with  fatigue,  he  sat  down  in  the  cottage  door 
way.  The  sun  sank,  the  firing  lessened.  In  a  farmhouse  a 
candle  twinkled  through  a  crack  in  the  shutters.  It  was  there 
that  the  divisional  staff  received  its  reports,  pored  over  maps, 
sent  forth  telegrams  and  made  desperate  plans  for  vengeance. 
They  would  have  it — this,  Andy  repeated,  was  not  the  end. 
He  was  so  sure  of  the  coming  triumph  that  he  could  dismiss 
the  day's  defeat. 

He  counted  Chrissly  dead  and  sorrowed  for  him.  He  pic 
tured  that  peaceful  Amish  farm — its  two  old  people — the 
scene  when  the  telegram  from  the  War  Department  should 
come.  .  .  . 

He  thought  of  his  mother  and  of  Blunston.  He  thought 
what  a  quiet  night  this  must  be  in  Americus — the  boys  would 
be  going  swimming  soon — and  he  thought  of  Sylvia. 

A  figure  crept  out  of  the  darkness. 

"Andy  I" 

The  whisper  reached  him  as  he  was  about  to  doze.  It  was 
as  if  the  dead  spoke.  He  was  sure  it  was  the  dead. 

"Is  that  you,  Chrissly?" 

Chrissly  Shuman  clapped  his  hands  on  Andy's  shoulders: 

"Did  you  sink  I'd  runned  away,  Andy?  I  hung  back  fer 
Leonie.  I  got  her  just  to  the  inn-door,  an'  then  a  shell  come 
— a  big  one — an'  I  couldn't  find  her  anywheres,  Andy — not 
nowheres  I  couldn't  find  her  at  all.  .  ." 


Reenforcements,  in  the  shape  of  the  rest  of  the  division, 
were  brought  up  during  the  night,  and  before  morning  prep 
arations  for  the  counter-attack  began  to  take  active  form. 
Company  after  company  was  marched  into  the  silent  dark; 
everybody  knew  that  there  approached  the  opportunity  of 
reparation. 

Andy's  regiment,  it  became  evident,  was  to  be  sent  directly 
against  the  village,  traversing  the  road  and  fields  along  which 


380  .VICTORIOUS 

their  retreat  had  lain.  The  way  was  almost  level  with  their 
objective  and  was  unprotected.  Already  the  enemy's  guns 
were  bombarding  their  positions.  The  sunrise  was  shrouded 
in  dense  smoke ;  the  air  crackled ;  yet,  tired  as  the  men  were, 
the  realization  of  a  new  chance  gave  them  fresh  strength  and 
buoyancy:  they  were  like  race-horses  prancing  at  the  line 
after  a  false  start. 

"Anyhow,"  said  Levy,  as  the  column  halted  at  a  crossroads 
and  came  to  rest,  "they  won't  use  gas-shells.  You  see — " 

"Who  cares  what  the  divils  use?"  demanded  Flynn. 

"Whenever  there  was  a  parting  of  the  red-streaked  smoke- 
clouds,  Mirande-la-Faloise  was  now  in  plain  view,  showing, 
at  that  distance,  few  signs  of  the  wounds  inflicted  by  yester 
day's  battle.  Andy  looked  at  it  as  the  crusaders  must  have 
looked  at  Jerusalem;  Chrissly  looked  at  it  out  of  haggard 
eyes.  Behind  them,  the  colonel  was  talking  to  a  smiling 
Graaberg  and  a  Garcia  whose  mouth  worked  with  a  nervous 
tick. 

"But  not  without  artillery — we  can't,"  Garcia  was  com 
plaining. 

The  colonel's  answer  was  almost  careless :  "We've  got  to." 

Andy  caught  the  words;  he  caught  the  tone.  We  had  to, 
therefore  we  would.  Therein  lay  all  of  America  in  this  whole 
conflict.  For  the  time,  the  fate  of  Mirande-la-Faloise  became 
the  final  fate  of  the  war  to  Andy.  Mirande-la-Faloise  would 
be  recaptured  against  the  impossible,  and  its  recapture  would 
— yes,  it  would  surely  mean  determining  victory.  .  .  . 

XI 

Through  waves  of  heat  and  billows  of  ripping  bullets,  the 
charge  began.  The  men  ran  at  dog-trot,  their  rifles  grasped 
two-thirds  of  the  way  up  the  barrels.  They  ran  with  their 
bodies  low,  but  with  their  souls  high. 

They  were  crossing  the  scene  of  their  retreat.  Helmets, 
mess-kits  and  blouses,  water-bottles  and  entrenching  tools 
were  scattered  broadcast,  belts,  boots,  bayonets,  torn  leggings ; 
they  tripped  over  the  discarded  things.  The  wounded  had 


yiCTORIOUS  381 

been  gathered  up,  but  the  dead  lay  where  they  had  fallen; 
corpses  prone  with  fingers  clawing  at  the  ground,  corpses  su 
pine  with  open  mouths  and  staring  eyes;  one  began  to  notice 
a  certain  repetition  in  their  postures,  as  if  a  plethora  of  ma 
terial  had  exhausted  the  possibilities  of  arrangement:  too 
many  had  died  of  late  for  the  living  to  be  sorry  for  any  one. 
And  this  was  not  the  end;  rather,  it  was  the  beginning. 

The  beginning  of  the  triumph:  that  sense,  once  lodged  in 
Andy's  brain,  remained  there.  He  ran  on,  impelled  by  an 
inexhaustible  energy;  he  laughed  at  every  military  caution. 
The  bullets  whined  like  hounds,  men  fell  on  his  right  hand 
and  on  his  left ;  Andy  was  not  afraid  to  fall,  but  fall  he  knew 
he  could  not  until  Mirande-la-Faloise  had  been  won.  Leonie 
waited  there  for  Chrissly:  he  must  help  retake  it  for  their 
sakes.  The  regiment's  honor  was  pledged  there :  he  must  help 
redeem  it.  The  new  peril  to  the  ancient  cause  was  symbolized 
by  this  village :  the  symbol  must  be  shattered  and  the  reality 
crushed.  A  splendid  rage  bore  him  on  its  wings;  democracy 
was  at  the  door  of  victory;  through  the  smoke,  far  ahead  of 
him,  he  could  see  the  golden  hair  and  the  gleaming  sword 
of  the  Maid. 

The  intensity  of  the  enemy's  fire  was  withering;  there  was 
no  pause,  no  respite;  but  the  line  of  advance  never  faltered. 
This  man  was  killed  and  that  man  wounded,  but  the  men 
did  not  pause.  Their  shirts  were  stiff  with  filth,  their  trousers 
white  with  dust;  through  the  caked  dirt  on  their  faces  the 
sweat  rolled  in  yellow  runnels.  Their  eyes  did  not  shift  from 
their  objective;  they  were  crazed  with  an  anger  that  kept 
them  cold  in  the  blistering  heat.  Thirst  meant  nothing  to 
them,  nor  weariness.  These  soldiers  who  had  been  the  pup 
pets  of  panic  scarcely  thirteen  hours  ago  now  went  forward 
against  a  fortified  and  unshelled  enemy,  went  forward  over 
unprotected  fields,  against  a  wind  of  death  —  as  veterans 
march  to  a  review. 

XII 

Andy's  battalion  was  to  assault  the  southern  extremity  of 
the  village,  and  his  company  was  to  strike  in  the  center  of 


383  VICTORIOUS 

that  part.  Thus,  at  half  a  mile  from  the  outlying  houses, 
they  debouched  again  into  a  piece  of  straight  road,  walled 
and  lined  with  Lombardy  poplars,  which  became  farther  up 
its  length,  the  street  of  Mirande-la-Faloise.  Arrived  there, 
they  changed  their  advancing  dog-trot  to  a  run,  their  silence 
to  a  chorus  of  yells. 

Ahead  of  them,  just  at  the  entrance  to  the  hamlets,  a  bar 
ricade  ran  from  one  stone  cottage  to  another  right  across  the 
way.  From  this  poured,  down  their  narrow  aisle,  a  flood  of 
machine-gun  bullets,  and  from  the  twin  cottages  came  a  spat 
ter  of  rifle-fire. 

"Now  we'll  get  them !  Now  we  can't  help  getting  them !" 
shrieked  Levy. 

He  bounded  in  front  of  Andy,  and  then  pitched  into  the 
dust  as  a  baseball  runner  slides  for  a  base. 

With  Graaberg  in  front,  the  remnant  of  the  company  leaped 
over  Levy's  corpse.  The  last  semblance  of  strict  formation 
was  lost.  Andy,  his  body  stooped  forward  against  the  fatal 
storm,  caught  sight  of  Carlo  Angelelli  on  his  left,  his  lips 
smiling;  on  the  other  side  came  Chrissly  with  fury  in  his 
eyes.  Johnson,  limping  ever  so  slightly,  was  falling  a  little 
behind,  where  Andy  saw,  or  felt,  the  presence  of  a  white  Gar 
cia;  but  Flynn,  big  Davies  and  the  former  pugilist  Ryan 
were  all  in  front,  Flynn's  voice  rising  above  all  the  racket  in 
a  banshee  battle-shriek.  The  swiftest  runners  took  the  lead. 

One  man  jumped  high  in  air  and  fell  down  dead.  Two  or 
three  others,  unable  to  turn  aside,  crashed  over  him.  The 
next  instant,  the  company  was  throwing  itself  across  the 
barricade  and  tossing  at  grips  with  the  defenders. 

Chrissly  transfixed  a  mustached  Saxon  with  his  bayonet, 
wheeled  and  drove  the  same  weapon  into  the  belly  of  another 
man,  whose  blood  spurted  over  his  slayer  from  waist  to  neck ; 
entangled  his  weapon  in  the  breast  of  a  third ;  seized  a  pistol 
and  blew  out  the  brains  of  a  fourth.  Ryan  was  performing 
almost  equal  prodigies  with  a  dripping  knife  wrenched  from 
the  expiring  grasp  of  his  first  victim.  Flynn  and  Davies  were 
clubbing  their  guns,  the  blows  cracking  bones  and  crushing 
skulls.  Graaberg  had  been  shot  in  the  right  arm,  but  was 


VICTOKIOUS  383 

using  his  pistol  with  his  left.  Andy  found  himself  swinging 
his  rifle  by  its  barrel  in  a  mighty  circle  around  his  head, 
screeching  Germans  falling  about  him.  Even  then,  he  knew 
that  he  had  no  hate  in  his  heart.  Individually,  these  were 
men  uncommonly  like  himself;  they  were  doubtless — it  struck 
him  as  odd  that  the  thought  should  remain  in  such  a  crisis 
of  activity — doubtless  fellows  from  towns  the  Teutonic  coun 
terparts  of  Americus,  with  friends  and  relatives  like  Andy's 
own.  But  collectively  they  were  the  enemy,  they  represented 
reaction,  barbarism,  the  rule  of  blood-and-iron,  and  therefore 
they  must  die.  His  rifle-butt  whizzed  around  his  head,  and 
another  of  them  fell. 

What  remained  were  now  running  headlong  down  the  way, 
where  the  white  houses  danced  in  the  heat  of  the  struggle. 
Some  members  of  Andy's  company  had  dashed  into  the  neigh 
boring  cottages;  they  were  flinging  from  the  upper  rooms 
the  bodies  of  sharpshooters  they  had  cornered  and  killed  there. 
His  fingers  in  the  throats  of  a  pair  of  his  enemies,  big  Davies 
lay  at  Andy's  feet,  a  knife  in  his  abdomen. 

"Don't  stop!  We've  got  them  on  the  run!"  shouted  Graa- 
berg,  waving  his  pistol  in  his  uninjured  hand.  "Come  on, 
now!" 

Clutching  up  rifles — any  rifles,  whether  of  friend  or  foe — 
the  company  raced  down  the  street.  Tiles  fell  among  them, 
chimney-pots  were  tossed  on  their  heads.  Shots  rang  out 
from  houses.  Other  American  soldiers,  squads  from  other 
companies,  were  bursting  in  from  the  byways,  and  of  these 
some  started  through  the  cottages  after  the  enemies  hidden 
there  and  flung  their  bleeding  bodies  on  the  cobblestones.  A 
few  houses,  fired  by  the  now  desperate  Germans,  blazed  into 
flame,  through  the  smoke  of  which  rifles  cracked,  the  wounded 
cried  for  mercy  and  fighting  men  shouted  oaths.  Chrissly 
had  disappeared  again.  The  dancing  Flynn  was  struck  by 
a  far-flung  tile ;  it  split  his  head  from  top  to  chin  and  silenced 
him  in  a  purple  puddle. 

On  and  on  up  the  street,  overtaking  and  subduing  party 
after  party  of  the  enemy,  Andy  and  his  company  fought  their 
way.  His  last  clip  of  cartridges  was  soon  exhausted.  He  saw; 


384-  VICTOKIOUS 

one  gray  man,  a  German  major,  fire  a  pistol-sliot  from  a 
doorway  and  then,  before  the  pursuers  could  reach  him,  ex 
plode  the  weapon  at  his  own  temple.  He  saw  many  drop  their 
rifles  and  fling  up  their  hands,  crying  "Kamerad !"  And,  in 
the  smoke  and  smell  of  slaughter,  he  saw,  but  nearer  to  him 
now,  the  radiant  armor  of  the  Maid. 

Then,  with  a  salvo  of  shots  to  clear  the  way,  an  entire 
platoon  of  Germans  ran  out  of  a  house  a  few  rods  ahead  of 
Andy's  friends  and,  their  hobnailed  boots  thundering  on  the 
stones,  turned  into  one  of  the  byways  that  led  to  the  farther 
fields  across  which  they  had  yesterday  come  victorious.  An 
immediate  fusillade  followed  them,  the  shots  ringing  against 
their  water-bottles.  Andy  and  a  few  others,  supposing  that 
their  friends  would  support  them,  raced  after  these  fugitives 
down  the  byway,  and  with  this  party  of  pursuit  Garcia  was 
carried  along. 

At  the  turning,  Andy  trod  on  the  outstretched  hand  of  a 
dead  man  and  fell.  He  had  lost  his  helmet;  his  head  struck 
sharply  against  the  cobbles,  and  he  lay  for  some  moments 
stunned. 

When,  amid  the  continued  racket  of  musketry,  he  raised 
his  eyes,  still  swimming  from  the  concussion,  he  was  looking 
directly  down  the  narrow,  corpse-strewn  alley.  At  ten  yards 
from  him  it  ended  at  the  stream.  Across  the  water  a  dozen 
Germans  plunged  toward  the  fields  and  the  safety  of  the 
woods  beyond. 

"Help !  Help !"  screamed  somebody. 

There  was  a  tussle  going  on  at  the  end  of  the  alley.  Five 
Germans  were  closing  in  upon  a  white-faced,  shouting  Amer 
ican  officer,  who  stood  with  his  back  against  a  cottage-wall. 

"Brown,  there — for  God's  sake,  help !" 

It  was  Garcia. 

His  skin  was  ashen;  his  eyes  protruded  wildly;  his  helmet 
was  gone  and  his  thick  black  hair,  always  unruly,  bristled  as 
with  fear ;  his  uniform  was  in  tatters.  He  looked  like  a  snarl 
ing  rat,  a  rat  frightened  to  the  point  of  fighting,  whom  ter 
riers  have  brought  at  last  to  bay.  In  one  red  hand  he  held 
a  knife,  and  with  this  he  struck  blindly  right  and  left.  One 


YICTOKIOUS  385 

of  his  opponents  was  similarly  armed;  of  the  four  others  one 
flourished  an  evidently  empty  pistol;  the  remainder  were 
weaponless. 

Andy  reached  for  his  rifle.  The  bayonet  had  been  loosened 
by  his  fall.  Eemembering  that  his  ammunition  was  ex 
hausted,  he  discarded  the  rifle  and  snatched  up  the  bayonet. 

The  village  still  crackled  with  battle.  To  Andy  it  seemed  as 
if  the  result  of  this  minor  action,  which  he  accepted  as  sym 
bolic  of  the  war  as  a  whole,  vibrated  in  the  balance;  democ 
racy  was  locked  with  autocracy  in  the  determinative  struggle. 
Of  that  struggle  Garcia  was,  however  unworthily,  a  part,  and 
even  aside  from  this  aspect  of  the  case,  it  was  impossible  to 
look  at  the  lieutenant  and  not  be  sorry  for  him,  nor  do  what 
one  could,  at  whatever  price,  to  save  him. 

It  was  as  if  somebody  seized  Andy's  hand  and  pulled  him 
to  his  feet.  He  could  feel  the  fingers  close  about  his  palm 
— the  cool  firm  fingers.  He  could  see,  he  was  sure,  the  ar 
mored  figure  by  his  side — could  catch  one  flash  of  the  won 
derful  eyes.  .  .  . 

He  ran  forward.  He  hurled  himself  among  Garcia's  as 
sailants. 

His  head  struck  the  man  with  the  pistol  in  the  midriff 
and  sent  him  sprawling.  He  felt  his  bayonet  grate  against 
another's  ribs.  He  seized  a  descending  hand  that  held  a  knife 
and  wrenched  the  knife  free  and  captured  it  himself.  A  fist 
caught  him  between  the  eyes,  but  he  struck  out  with  the  knife. 

He  had  a  vision  of  a  woman's  face,  bright  and  yet  like  the 
face  of  an  ice-statue.  .  .  . 

The  first  man  that  had  fallen  scurried  into  a  cottage. 

Andy  had  a  sense  of  Garcia  standing,  petrified  with  terror, 
against  the  wall. 

"Fight!"  he  cried.    "Fight I" 

The  man  that  had  gone  into  the  cottage  came  out.  Andy, 
from  the  corner  of  his  eye,  saw  the  fellow  creeping  forward 
with  a  weapon — it  was  an  old  fowling-piece — clutched  in  his 
two  hands. 

One  of  the  fallen  men  had  regained  his  feet. 

The  boy  struck  once  more  with  his  knife.  Again  he  struck 


386  VICTORIOUS 

and  again.    Two  men  went  down.    He  fought  like  Tydeus, 
son  of  (Eneus.    ... 

XIII 

CKrissly  had  gone  in  search  of  Leonie. 

He  ran,  regardless  of  the  flying  death,  distractedly  through 
the  village.  Mirande-la-Faloise  had  suffered  cruelly  from  yes 
terday's  bombardment.  Scarcely  a  building  in  the  hamlet  of 
the  town  escaped  the  shells,  and  many  had  been  hit  more 
than  once.  The  church-tower  was  pitched  into  the  street,  and 
now  men  had  fought  across  the  ruins;  its  clock  lay  in  the 
gutter,  a  mass  of  broken  wires  and  splintered  metal.  Here 
was  a  house  utterly  pulverized,  there  one  a  mass  of  newly 
kindled  flames. 

Chrissly  sought  the  inn.  He  went  through  a  bystreet,  and 
no  enemy — or  friend — checked  him.  Bumping,  stumbling 
over  unseen  impediments  into  unguessed  pitfalls,  he  made 
his  way.  Shots  rang  overhead.  Concussions  shook  the  tiles, 
rattled  the  ground  like  an  earthquake.  There  would  come 
moments  of  comparative  silence  that,  uncompanioned,  would 
have  seemed  ear-splitting,  and  then  staggering  volumes  of 
sound  like  the  approaching  finale  of  a  horrible  composition 
wherein  the  hideous  hell-music  climbed  ever  higher  and 
higher,  note  upon  intolerable  note,  beyond  all  human  con 
ception. 

He  reached  what  remained  of  the  Inn  of  the  Lilies.  It 
was  a  mere  shell.  Only  the  blackened  walls  stood.  Between 
them,  planks,  chairs,  tables,  bedding — all  the  once  lost  and 
once  recovered  contents  of  the  ancient  resting-place  for  trav 
elers,  all  those  things  which  must  have  meant  home  for  L6- 
onie — rose  in  a  still  smoking  heap  from  the  ruin  of  the 
cellars. 

The  body  of  an  old  man  topped  this  funeral-pyre.  His  face 
was  calm,  but  his  white  locks  were  wet.  His  throat  had  been 
cut  from  ear  to  ear. 

Chrissly  began  madly  to  tug  with"  bare  hands  at  the  smol 
dering  wreckage.  He  pulled  some  boards  from  before  what 
had  a  day  ago  been  a  chimney-piece.  A  woman  crouched 


VICTORIOUS  387 

there,  an  uninjured  woman — but  not  her  he  sought.  This  was 
as  old  as  the  man  whose  corpse  lay  close  by.  She  raised  her 
hands  for  mercy. 

"Let  me  stay !"  she  screamed.  "Let  me  stay !  I  have  noth 
ing!" 

"Leonie!"  yelled  Chrissly.   "Where  is  Leonie?" 

The  woman  hid  her  face.    Chrissly  shook  her. 

"I  do  not  know/'  groaned  the  woman.  "Yesterday  she  hid. 
I  saw  two  Boche  dragging  her  down  that  bystreet  toward 
the  fields/'  .  .  . 

X'lV 

When  Chrissly,  his  bayonet-mounted  rifle  swung  in  his 
hands,  ran  into  that  bystreet,  he  came  upon  what  might  have 
been  posed  for  as  a  tableau  of  triumph.  Garcia,  saved,  leaned 
against  the  cottage-wall,  his  eyes  closed.  Above  the  bodies  of 
four  Germans  stood  the  boyish  figure  of  Andy  Brown,  his 
red  head  up,  his  freckled  face  alight,  his  nostrils  wide,  hia 
glance  clear  and  fixed,  not  on  anything  around  him,  but  on 
something  that  he  seemed  to  see  in  the  already  brightening 
sky — something  that  nobody  else  could  see  there,  yet  some 
thing  by  him  so  clearly  seen  that  his  own  gaze  took  on  a  ra 
diance  no  longer  earthly. 

It  was  best  to  look  upward,  but  it  had  been  safer  to  search 
the  earth.  A  form  that  had  skulked  in  the  shadow  of  the 
houses  leaped  forward  and  leveled  a  fowling-piece  against 
Andy's  breast. 

There  was  a  flash  and  a  roar.  Andy  fell. 

Chrissly  came  forward  in  a  single  jump.  He  tripped  the 
already  fleeing  German.  The  man,  a  big  fellow,  turned  over 
on  his  back  and  tried  to  rise. 

Chrissly  drove  his  bayonet  into  the  German's  belly.  .  .  . 


XY 

1  'She's  here,"  said  Andy,  when  first  he  opened  his  eyes. 
His  eyes  were  very  large.  "Oh,  no,  of  course — I  forgot" — • 
he  smiled — "you  can't  see  her." 


388  VICTORIOUS 

They  had  laid  him  in  the  shadow  of  the  wall  where  his 
enemy  so  lately  skulked.  His  head  was  on  Chrissly's  lap,  and 
Chrissly's  thighs  were  wet  with  blood.  They  had  flung  Gar- 
cia's  blouso — an  officer's  blouse,  the  blouse  of  the  man  that 
had  been  Andy's  enemy — over  the  hideous  wound.  There  was 
no  question  of  finding  a  surgeon:  the  boy's  breast  was  shot 
away. 

"I  forgot,"  Andy  went  on — "I  forgot  I  was  dying."  He 
smiled.  His  freckled  face  was  calmly  beautiful.  "I  am  dy 
ing?"  he  insisted. 

It  was  not  an  appeal.  It  was  merely  a  question  asked  by 
one  that  cared  only  for  the  facts. 

"No !"  said  Garcia,  kneeling  beside  him. 

"Yes,"  said  Chrissly,  bending  above  the  boy.  "I  guess  you 
got  yours,  Andy."  His  voice  was  very  low. 

Save  for  these  three  and  the  bodies  of  the  five  Germans, 
the  cobbled  alley  was  empty.  Throughout  the  village  the  firing 
had  ceased.  A  strange  silence  brooded  over  Mirande-la-Fa- 
loise,  and  the  sun  shone. 

"Have  we  won?"  asked  Andy. 

"We've  won,"  said  Chrissly;  "and,"  he  added,  with  a  nod 
toward  the  cramped  corpse  of  the  man  that  had  held  the 
fowling-piece,  "I  did  fer  him." 

"Then  it's  all  right,"  said  Andy— "if  we've  won."  He 
seemed  content.  "I  knew  we  would.  You  needn't  have  killed 
that  fellow,  Chrissly:  it  didn't  matter." 

Garcia  broke  in;  his  face  was  twisted  by  twitching  grief: 

"I'm  damned  sorry,  Brown.  I'm  damned  sorry — for  every 
thing.  You're  a  nice  kid." 

Andy's  eyes  studied  him.  "Oh,  that's  all  right,  sir,"  said 
Andy. 

"But  I'm  sorry!"  insisted  Garcia. 

"You  only  did  what  you  had  to,"  said  Andy.  "It's  all  right, 
r." 

Garcia,  his  shoulders  shaking,  turned  his  face  away. 

"Chrissly?"  whispered  the  dying  boy. 

Chrissly  bent  closer. 

"Leonie?" 


VICTORIOUS  389 

"I — I  can't  find  her  anywheres." 

"Oh/7  said  Andy — the  knowledge  of  his  friend's  distress 
clouded  his  contentment — "it's  too  bad — it's  too  bad!" 

"But  I'm  goin'  to  keep  on  tryin',"  said  Chrissly. 

"I  hope  you'll  find  her,  Chrissly." 

It  was  now  only  a  question  of  minutes,  the  end. 

"Want  me  to  send  any  word  to  anybody,  Andy?"  asked 
Chrissly. 

"Yes."  The  boy's  face  brightened.  "Thank  you.  Not 
straight  to  mother.  Write  B.  Frank  McGregor  at  Aix.  He's 
going  home.  Tell  him  I  didn't  change  my  mind  once — not 
once — about  anything  I've  done  over  here — but  tell  him  I 
said  he  was  good  to  me — and  I  remembered  about  that  boy 
with  red  hair — and  I  hope  he'll  think  of  me  that  way." 

"I  will,"  said  Chrissly. 

"B.  Frank  McGregor,  at  Aix." 

"I  unnerstand." 

"The  insurance  more  than  covers  the  bond.  Mother'll  have 
something.  Tell  him  to  give  her — my  love,  Chrissly.  And 
Blunston. — I've  kept  faith — he'll  understand.  And  all  the 
fellows  at  home,"  he  resumed. — "That's  not  important. — I'm 
only  one  out  of  so  many. — Still — " 

He  closed  his  eyes  for  a  moment.  His  lips  moved — some 
words  about  an  electric-lamp  at  a  station,  only  half  distin 
guishable. 

Presently,  in  the  midst  of  a  sentence,  he  opened  his  eyes 
again — brown  eyes  that  saw  into  the  sky,  and  never  blinked. 

"And  tell  Her" — his  freckled  face  suddenly  became  trans 
figured,  it  glowed  with  a  strange  light — "Joan  never  left  me. 
I  kept  getting  nearer  and  nearer,  and  then  Joan  never  left 
me.  Be  sure  to  say  that :  Joan  never  left  me.  She's" — slowly 
he  raised  a  steady  hand.  He  pointed  upward:  "She's  right 
by  me  now. — We've  won.  The  Cause" — He  sat  suddenly  up 
right  in  Chrissly's  arms.  He  seemed  to  listen  for  a  moment 
and  then  to  repeat  something  that  he  had  heard.  His  voice 
rang  out  clear  through  the  mean  street.  Garcia  turned  at  the 
sound  of  it :  "The  Cause  is  bigger  than  its  mistakes !" 

Involuntarily,  the  gaze  of  both  his  comrades  followed  the 


390  VICTOKIOUS 

upward  direction  of  the  pointing  finger.  Did  they  see  noth 
ing?— Or  did  they  catch  the  glint  of  shining  armor  and  of 
golden  hair?  .  .  .  And,  still  above  that  another  presence 
— a  Presence  with  pitying  eyes  and  open  arms  and  the  pierced 
hands  of  peace  ?  .  .  . 

When  they  looked  down  again,  Andy's  brown  eyes  had 
closed,  and  his  face  was  the  face  of  a  little  boy.  He  sank 
back.  With  the  faint  sigh  of  a  child  tired  from  play,  he  nes 
tled  into  Chrissly's  lap. 

"I  guess  I'll  go  to  sleep/'  said  Andy, 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

OF  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  STABS,  AND  OF  HOW  "ONE  STAB  DIF- 
FERETH  FROM  ANOTHER  STAE  IN  GLORY" 

KEPLER,  the  Daily  'Spy  reporter,  passed  along  Second 
Street  and  stopped,  as  he  always  did,  to  call  to  Blunston 
seated  on  the  porch : 

"Know  anything?" 

Blunston  replied  with  the  usual  shake  of  his  iron-gray  head 
and  the  usual  counter-question : 

"Do  you?" 

"Not  a  thing,"  said  Kepler.  "There's  a  mail  in  from 
France.  Thought  maybe  you'd  got  a  letter  from  Andy." 

"No,"  said  Blunston.  "Now  he's  a  soldier,  I  suppose  he 
can't  write  so  often.  .  .  ." 

"There's  not  one  Doncaster  County  hoy  in  to-day's  lists," 
Kepler  remarked.  "There's  nothing  new  at  all,  except  Babe 
Campbell  told  me  there's  a  woman  registered  at  the  Hotel 
Americus  with  one  of  those  police-dogs  you  see  in  the  movies. 
I'm  just  going  up  to  take  a  look  at  it." 

Blunston,  in  the  breezeless  summer  day,  continued  writing 
at  the  notes  of  the  book  that  he  had  planned.  His  weather- 
beaten  face  was  the  face  of  a  man  contented ;  for  the  first  time 
since  he  surrendered  his  ambition  to  Andy,  he  was  quite  tran 
quil  :  he  had  a  new  work  to  do ;  Andy  had  shown  it  to  him. 

During  more  than  thirty  months  after  that  August  when 
the  European  volcano  burst  with  the  fires  of  world-destruction, 
Blunston  had  been  of  those  who  tried  to  awaken  America  to 
her  danger;  when  the  late  awakening  came,  he  sacrificed  his 
desires  for  the  sake  of  Sarah  Tollens'  son,  and  felt,  or 
thought  he  felt,  the  numbing  touch  of  age;  but  now  Andy's 
letters,  showing  him  how  unready  his  country  had  been  for 

391 


392  VICTORIOUS 

war,  forced  the  question  of  whether  she  was  giving  any  thought 
to  the  inevitable  aftermath — forced,  as  he  looked  about  him, 
a  negative  answer,  and  fixed  in  him  the  determination  to  show 
her,  before  it  was  too  late,  the  need  to  prepare  for  the  stu 
pendous  tasks  of  peace  and  reconstruction.  Ere  the  struggle 
was  ended,  while  yet  Andy  and  his  comrades  fought  in  France, 
Blunston,  in  America,  would  write  The  Lesson  of  the  War. 

It  was  a  day,  not  properly  of  mist,  but  of  sun-dust;  there 
had  been  a  morning  threat  of  thunder,  but  before  the  after 
noon  was  over,  the  skies  would  be  swept  clean  for  a  triumphal 
pageant  of  crimson  and  purple  and  gold.  Already  Blunston 
could  see  sketches  of  perfect  azure  between  the  dark-leaved 
boughs  of  the  Norway  maple,  and  upward  toward  the  zenith 
passed  a  flash  of  red  as  an  untroubled  cardinal-bird  shot  by. 
Thus  would  the  battle-day  of  America  end,  and  of  Americus  ? 

Reflecting  the  big  country,  the  little  town  showed  him, 
whenever  he  walked  its  streets,  plain  signs  that  it  had  at  last 
undergone  the  great  change.  There  were  some  gold  stars  on 
the  service-flags  and  some  new  black  among  the  women's  cos 
tumes  on  Elm  Avenue.  Fresh  sorrows  came  with  every 
morning,  and  the  finely-printed  casualty-lists  in  every  paper 
were  picked  out  with  anxious  eyes.  The  names  of  boys  that 
until  a  few  months  since  had  never  been  farther  from  home 
than  Philadelphia,  were  published  as  wounded  on  the  banks 
of  the  Marne,  prisoners  in  Magdeburg,  dead  in  the  Argonne, 
or,  still  more  dreadfully,  "Missing" ;  lads  wrote  that  they  sel 
dom  received  the  letters  sent  from  home  and  often  did  not 
get  their  pay ;  they  were  now  known  to  be  improperly  clothed ; 
stories  came  across  the  sea  of  aeroplane  failure  and  ordnance 
and  of  these  failures'  price  in  human  lives ;  the  confusion  in 
the  records  pronounced  the  unhurt  killed,  the  slightly- 
wounded  seriously,  and  all  the  lists  were  from  five  to  seven 
weeks  delayed. 

Yet  nothing  could  have  been  finer  or  more  American  than 
the  way  in  which  these  things  were  borne.  Every  recurring 
hardship  left  the  town  stronger  to  meet  the  apparently  end 
less  hardships  still  to  follow;  each  loan  found  more  sub 
scribers;  to  the  Red  Cross  and  the  welfare-workers  Americus 


VICTORIOUS  393 

subscribed  a  third  of  its  assessed  wealth;  if  tears  were  shed 
for  bereavements,  they  were  shed  in  secret.  This  was  an  era 
of  silence.  Even  Lawyer  Dickey  had  ceased  his  complaints, 
and  Colonel  Eskessen  took  his  bond-depreciations  mutely. 
There  would  come  a  time  of  reckoning ;  meanwhile  it  was  bet 
ter  to  lose  a  son  or  a  lover  than  not  to  have  helped  him  go. 
'Any  return  to  the  old  life  of  simple  hungers  and  their  satis 
faction  was  too  distant  to  contemplate;  above  every  thought 
for  the  future  was  placed  the  present  determination  to  tri 
umph. 

Blunston  was  glad  to  live  in  such  a  town  and  to  be  writing 
for  such  a  country.  He  went  quietly  on  with  his  work.  It 
was  not  until  half  an  hour  after  Kepler's  departure  that,  with 
Tac  slinking  behind  her,  Sylvia  interrupted  him.  She  was 
shaking  hands  before  he  could  believe  his  blinking  eyes. 

"I've  been  abroad  with  the  Over  There  Theater  League.  I 
landed  only  a  week  ago." 

"But,"  stammered  Blunston— "but  here   .   .    " 

She  was  dressed  simply  in  a  close-clinging  gown  of  blue. 
Against  the  wide  brim  of  her  dark  straw  hat,  her  hair  rose  in 
golden  ripples. 

"Don't  be  afraid,"  she  smiled — she  bent  to  stroke  Tac's 
brindled  coat,  but  she  looked  up  to  smile  at  Blunston — "I 
didn't  come  to  Americus  to  pay  you  a  visit,  Mr.  Blunston :  I 
met  a  boy  over  there  that  you'd  told  me  about,  and  I  came  to 
this  town  to  see  his  mother." 

"Andy?    There's  nothing  the  matter?" 

"He's  quite  well.  Only  I  thought  his  mother" — Sylvia's 
eyes  were  wistful  now — "might  like  to  see  somebody  that  had 
seen  him  in  France." 

Blunston  breathed  his  relief.  There  had  come  no  letter 
from  Andy  since  one  written  in  the  training-camp.  Blunston 
had  hopes  that  the  German  offensive  might  crumble  before  his 
protege's  unit  would  be  fit  to  fight,  but  he  knew  war,  and  he 
knew  that  none  should  count  upon  its  consistency. 

"Oh,  of  course  she  will.  I'll  be  glad  .  .  ."  He  looked  at 
the  radiant  girl  before  him  and  then  thought  of  the  shabby 
little  parlor  in  Sarah's  home.  "I'll  send  her  a  note  to  come 


394:  VICTORIOUS 

here     .     .     .     tea     .     .     .     something  of  that  sort.    .     .     . 
You're  sure  he's  quite    .    .    ." 

"He  says  he's  better  than  he  ever  was  before.  He  says  the 
trenches  seem  to  agree  with  him." 

"The  trenches?" 

"Yes,  he's  been  in.  Didn't  you  know  ?  He  was  going  back 
there  when  he  left  Aix.  I — I  said  good-by  to  him" — she  bent 
over  Tac  again,  and  this  time  she  did  not  look  up — "good-by 
to  him  at  Aix." 

The  father  in  Blunston  was  quick  to  see  the  change  in  her 
manner.  "Sit  down.  I'll  go  inside  and  write  a  note  to  Mrs. 
— Mrs.  Brown.  .  .  ." 

II 

Miss  Hattie  Lloyd  had  not  been  idle.  She  had,  in  fact, 
bothered  Lawyer  Dickey  until  he  pretended  acquiescence  with 
her  suspicions  in  the  mad  hope  of  getting  rid  of  her,  where 
upon  she  said: 

"If  you  think  I'm  right,  why  don't  you  do  something  ?" 

He  put  her  off  as  long  as  he  could,  but  he  knew  from  the 
beginning  that  no  delays  of  the  merely  legal  mind  would  be 
proof  against  her  persistence.  In  the  end,  he  had  to  call  Ralph 
into  Miss  Hattie's  presence  and  there  to  cross-examine  him. 
The  upshot  of  the  matter  was  that  Bolingbroke  found  himself 
the  poorer  by  one  house. 

The  miserable  man  was  quite  dumfounded.  He  had  his 
faults,  but  dishonesty,  as  Dickey  had  said,  was  not  among 
them. 

"I  can't  imagine  how  this  thing  happened !"  he  finally  man 
aged  to  ejaculate.  "I  can't  see  how  it  ever  happened.  I'll 
look  up  the  papers  to  make  sure — " 

"I've  done  that  already,"  said  Miss  Hattie,  giving  herself 
a  little  hug. 

" — and  if  you're  right — "  Ralph  tried  to  continue. 

"Pf oof !"  said  Miss  Hattie. 

" — as  you  certainly  seem  to  be,"  Ralph  plunged  on,  "why, 
then — of  course — but  I  can't  imagine  how  it  ever  happened 
at  all." 


VICTOKIOUS  395 

"Old,  it's  perfectly  simple,"  Dickey  protested — lie  hated 
scenes — "it  might  occur  to  any  one." 

"Only  not  every  one/'  said  Miss  Hattie,  "would  let  his  wife 
go  around  calling  a  woman  like  Sarah  Brown  a  liar."  And, 
with  a  quick  cock  of  her  head,  she  told  all  that  had  happened 
between  herself  and  Mrs.  Ralph. 

Ralph  hurried  away.  He  hurried  so  swiftly  that  his  wife 
was  in  Sarah's  parlor  fifteen  minutes  later:  an  angry  young 
wife  with  her  eyes  red  and  her  capacious  bosom  heaving. 

"I  just  came  to  tell  you,"  she  snapped,  "that  you've  got 
what  you  wanted,  and  I  hope  you're  proud  of  the  way  you 
got  it." 

Sarah,  tall  and  sallow,  was  standing  beside  the  center- 
table  that  bore  the  family-Bible  with  its  precious  record  of 
Tollenses  born,  baptized,  married  and  deceased. 

"I  don't  know  what  you're  talking  about,"  she  said. 

Mrs.  Ealph  stormed.  "Oh,  yes,  you  do!  You  know  well 
enough.  You've  turned  the  Americus  Chapter  of  the  Red  Cross 
out  of  house  and  home.  I  was  sent  up  here  to  apologize  to  you 
for  saying  something  or  other  to  that  old  cat  Hattie  Lloyd,  and 
I  do  apologize,  for  I  was  a  perfect  fool  to  trust  her;  but  I 
must  say  I  thought  you'd  have  a  little  more  dignity  than  to 
tell  the  whole  town  about  that  old  piece  of  paper  you  threat 
ened  me  with  and  I  burnt." 

"You  mean,"  asked  Sarah  slowly,  "that  you've  found  out 
I  own  the  Tidd  house?" 

"Found  it  out?  First  you  tell  me  it;  then  Hattie  Lloyd 
tells  the  whole  town,  and  to-day  Ralph  shouts  it  at  me  as  if 
it  was  my  fault.  It  doesn't  seem  to  me  I  had  to  hunt  very 
much  for  it." 

"I'm  sorry  you  were  annoyed,"  said  SaraK. 

"Then  why  couldn't  you  come  to  me  like  a  lady?"  Mrs. 
Bolingbroke  demanded.  "Why  did  you  have  to  go  gossiping 
to  everybody  in  Americus  ?" 

Sarah  drew  herself  up.  "I  didn't  mention  the  Tidd  house 
to  anybody,"  she  said. 

Mrs.  Ralph's  entrance  had  been  precipitate,  and  on  it  the 
street-door  was  not  latched.  Of  this  Miss  Hattie  took  advan- 


396  VICTORIOUS 

tage,  as  soon  as  she  reached  Sarah's  dwelling  after  concluding 
her  interview  with  Dickey.     She  came  directly  to  the  parlor. 

"There's  one  person  you  talked  to !"  flamed  Mrs.  Ralph  at 
sight  of  her. 

Miss  Hattie  was  nothing  if  not  appreciative  of  the  finer 
shades  of  a  quarrel.  She  had  wanted  to  be  the  first  to  bear 
the  news  to  Sarah,  but  she  understood  at  once  that  for  this 
she  was  a  moment  tardy.  The  agile  old  brain  supplied  all 
that  she  had  missed;  she  made  the  most  of  her  disappoint 
ment  by  scoring  off  Mrs.  Ralph : 

"Sarah  never  opened  her  lips  to  me/'  said  Miss  Hattie.  "I 
guessed  the  whole  thing  myself.  If  you  don't  believe  me,  get 
Ralph  to  ask  Lawyer  Dickey." 

Ralph  must,  in  a  rare  courage  bred  of  indignation,  have 
been  rather  hard  on  his  wife.  This  hint  of  an  appeal  through 
him  was,  at  any  rate,  more  than  that  wife  could  bear.  She 
sank  into  a  rocking-chair.  Her  gray  eyes,  which  were  never 
wide,  altogether  closed  with  hysteria.  She  lost  all  her  pretti- 
ness. 

Miss  Hattie,  never  taking  her  glance  off  her  victim,  em 
braced  herself  ecstatically. 

"Now  it'll  get  all  over  t-town,"  that  young  woman  sobbed. 
"You'll  t-t-tell  everybody  how  I  b-b-burned  that  p-paper — " 

"What  paper?"  asked  Miss  Hattie. 

"It  was  only  a  letter,"  said  Sarah  hastily.  "It  didn't  mat 
ter.  It  was  an  accident." 

Mrs.  Ralph  did  not  hear  this.  "People  will  say  I've  b-been 
unj-j-just,  and  I  never  m-meant  to  be  unjust."  Sarah  laid 
a  gnarled  hand  on  the  distracted  young  woman's  head,  but  the 
distracted  young  woman  went  on:  "Me  unjust!  And  now 
they'll  all  hear  this—" 

Sarah  looked  at  Miss  Hattie.  That  one  advanced  toward  her 
fallen  enemy.  This  was  the  moment  of  Miss  Hattie's  triumph, 
but  the  triumph  was  too  thorough,  and  even  the  Miss  Hatties 
of  the  world  can  sometimes  be  magnanimous. 

"I  guess  I  know  when  to  keep  things  to  myself,"  she  said. 
"I'll  never  breathe  a  word  about  the  paper.  Sarah,  you  don't 
seem  very  grateful  for  that  house,  I  must  say." 


VICTOKIOUS  397 

Sarah  Brown  spoke  slowly,  marking  her  sentences  by  awk 
ward  pattings  of  Mrs.  Ralph's  bobbing  head : 

"I  suppose  I  can't  pretend  the  house  isn't  mine  if  all  you 
people  want  to  say  it  is,  but  it's  no  use  to  me.  I  don't  need  it. 
Of  course  I  wouldn't  think  of  turning  out  the  Red  Cross — it's 
theirs  for  as  long  as  they  can  use  it." 

Mrs.  Ralph  struggled  upward  and  flung  grateful  arms 
around  Sarah's  neck.  She  desisted  only  to  kiss  Miss  Hattie 
— and  to  secure  a  repetition  of  the  promise  that  no  mention 
would  ever  be  made  of  the  burned  paper. 

"Not  even  to  Ralph,"  she  said.     "Especially  not  to  him." 

And  then  she  invited  them  both  to  dinner  and  wept  again, 
but  more  gently  now,  when  they  both  refused. 

Somehow  Sarah  got  rid  of  them  both,  and,  when  they  had 
gone,  took  down  from  the  mantelpiece  the  two  photographs  of 
Andy,  the  one  of  him  as  a  little  child,  the  other  in  his  uni 
form.  She  looked  at  them  for  a  long  while  and  laid  them  on 
the  center-table  beside  the  Bible  when  she  sat  down  there  to 
write  a  letter  to  her  son : 

"You  will  be  surprised  to  hear" — she  began — "about  what 
has  just  happened.  Some  people  would  call  it  good  luck.  For 
my  part,  I  don't  intend  to  profit  by  it,  but  you  v^ill  be  needing 
money  one  of  these  days,  I  suppose,  and  when  that  time 
comes — " 

It  was  at  this  moment  that  Blunston's  note  arrived,  asking 
her  to  come  at  once  and  meet  somebody  that  had  lately  seen 
Andy,  alive  and  well,  at  Aix-les-Bains. 

It  was  also  at  this  moment  that  a  muddy  motor-car  rolled 
up  to  the  Hotel  Americus,  and  a  stout  little  man  got  out  and 
registered  and  asked  Andrew  Blunston's  address.  The  man 
was  followed  by  a  servant,  who  marshaled  a  multitude  of  bags, 
each  bearing  a  fresh  customs-inspector's  stamp.  .  .  . 

in 

That  had  been  a  pleasant  tea-party  at  the  old  Blunston 
house.  The  host  seated  his  guests  in  the  hall  that  ran  right' 


398  VICTORIOUS 

through  the  place,  the  hall  into  which  the  seventeenth-century 
stairway  descended.  Two  doors,  each  opening  across  its  mid 
dle,  swung  wide,  the  one  letting  in  the  subdued  sounds  from 
Second  Street,  the  other  giving  upon  the  great  back  yard  with 
its  crowding  trees  and  permitting  a  glimpse  of  the  silver  Sus- 
quehanna  and  the  green  York  County  hills  on  the  other  side. 
The  sun  was  setting,  as  Blunston  had  known  it  would,  in  crim 
son  and  purple  and  gold ;  the  scent  of  flowers  floated  in,  damp 
and  cool;  there  came  with  it  the  last  glad  calls  of  homing 
birds. 

Sarah,  somewhat  to  Blunston's  surprise,  had  taken  to  Syl 
via  almost  at  once,  and  Sylvia  had  gone — the  radiant  Sylvia ! 
— straight  up  to  Sarah  and  caught  her  work-hardened  hand 
with  trusting  directness.  For  one  moment  the  man  saw  the 
elder  woman  hesitate,  saw  her  dull  eyes  search  the  wistful  eyes 
of  the  younger.  Would  the  guarding  mother  in  Sarah  sound 
an  alarm,  as  the  paternal  instinct  in  him  had  sounded  it? 
Would  the  Tollens  pride,  and  the  mistrust  bred  by  those  long 
years  of  social  affront,  reject  these  advances?  Perhaps  they 
wanted  to,  perhaps  they  tried.  But  they  did  not  succeed: 
Sarah  smiled  and  sat  down  beside  Sylvia,  and  the  mother 
fell  to  questioning  the  girl  about  Andy  as  if  the  girl  had 
known  the  absent  soldier  all  her  life. 

Tea  was  over  before  the  talk  died  down,  and  Blunston  be 
gan  to  wonder  whether  he  should  not  have  sent  for  his  cousins. 
Sarah  was  telling  stories  of  Andy's  earliest  days:  not  since 
his  return  to  Americus  to  live  had  Blunston  seen  her  so  vis 
ibly  happy.  Sylvia  was  listening.  The  scene  was  very  rest 
ful  ;  it  was  like  the  dawn  of  peace.  .  .  . 

Tac  looked  up  sharply  from  his  place  at  Sylvia's  feet.  A 
heavy  step  fell  on  the  gravel  of  the  front  walk.  A  pudgy  lit 
tle  man  with  a  round  face  and  gray  mustache  and  bags  of  dark 
skin  under  his  eyes  hesitated  at  the  doorway. 

"Mr.  Blunston?   I  suppose  you  don't  remember  me." 

Sylvia  was  on  her  feet.  She  motioned  the  dog  to  fall  back. 
The  old  cloud  of  perplexity  brushed  her  brows:  "Mr.  Mc 
Gregor!" 

He  started  at  the  sight  of  her.     While  Blunston  greeted 


VICTORIOUS  399 

him,  He  seemed  to  demur  about  something  and  then  come  to  a 
resolution. 

Sarah  had  timidly  drawn  a  step  aside.  Sylvia  came  quickly 
up  to  the  two  men.  She  was  white,  and  her  lips  trembled. 

"Something  has  happened/'  she  whispered.  "I  know  it. 
Well,  you  mustn't — " 

But  she  was  too  late.  Mr.  McGregor  either  had  not  seen 
Sarah  or  did  not  guess  her  identity:  the  emotions  that  had 
hurried  him  from  France  would  be  restrained  no  longer.  He 
flung  a  packet  among  the  ringing  cups  and  plates  upon  the 
tea-table. 

"Andy  Brown/'  he  said — "there's  his  distinguished-service 
cross.  I've  brought  it  home  to  his  mother ;  it  came  too  late 
for  him :  he  was  killed  at  Mirande-la-Faloise  on  the  fifteenth." 

"Stop!"  cried  Sylvia. 

Blunston  was  trembling  like  a  man  ague-stricken.  Sarah 
stood  very  erect ;  the  lines  about  her  mouth  deepened.  Oh,  it 
was  quite  too  late:  McGregor  was  so  whirled  before  the  on 
slaught  of  his  grief  that  he  could  note  no  other's. 

"A  friend  of  the  boy's  sent  for  me." — The  words  shot  from 
him  like  bullets  from  a  machine-gun — "Told  me  about  it. — 
Andy'd  asked  him  to. — Sent  his  love  to  his  mother. — Said  to 
tell  Blunston  he'd  kept  faith. — Said  the  Cause  was  bigger  than 
its  mistakes. — Said  somebody  named  Joan'd  been  with  him 
right  along — and  said  he  was  glad  he  reminded  me  of  my  kid 
that  died." — He  raised  his  absurdly  short  arms  above  his  head ; 
his  voice  had  been  shrill  and  cracked,  but  now  it  rose  suddenly 
to  a  shriek :  "I  tell  you,  Andy  Brown  was  the  finest  boy  in 
France.  I  wish  to  God  I'd  died  in  his  place !" 

Here  followed  a  heavy  silence.  As  with  a  new-born  dignity, 
Sarah  was  walking  toward  the  sob-torn  little  man. 

"Mr.  McGregor/'  she  said  when  she  reached  him,  "I  am 
Andy's  mother." 

She  took  his  startled  hand  and  pressed  it.  Then,  turning 
to  Sylvia,  she  bent  and  kissed  her  mouth  and  walked  through 
the  front  doorway,  alone. 

Blunston  watched  her,  clapped  his  fingers  to  his  deep-set 
eyes,  drew  himself  together,  ran  after  her. 


400  yiCTOKIOUS 

IY 

Sylvia  stood  with  her  back  to  the  hall,  looking  among  the 
trees  and  up  the  now  golden  river,  across  which,  behind  the 
pine-clad  hills,  the  sun  was  setting  in  a  triumph  of  color.  Mc 
Gregor  had  collapsed  into  an  old  saddle-back  chair;  his  hands 
hid  his  face. 

Sylvia  spoke  without  turning.  Her  voice  was  clear,  as  al 
ways,  but  monotonous  now.  "It  seemed  terrible  to  me,  but  it 
had  to  be  told  sometime:  she  had  to  know." 

"My  God!"  whispered  McGregor. 

"7  knew  it,"  said  Sylvia,  "the  instant  I  saw  you." 

McGregor  did  not  raise  his  face.  "Of  course  they  had  to 
die — some  of  them:  that's  war.  But  where  one  would  die,  a 
hundred  are  dying  because  we  haven't  any  tanks  to  go  ahead 
of  them — anywhere  along  our  front — except  a  few  the  French 
lent  us — no  artillery  to  support  them — the  men — and  no  aero 
planes  to  reconnoiter  with — not  an  American-made  plane." 

He  stopped  a  moment,  then  went  on : 

"That  was  my  fault — mine  and  the  fellows  like  me.  We 
wouldn't  let  anybody  in  with  us — the  men  up  top  wanted  the 
power  and  wouldn't  admit  they  could  make  a  mistake;  the 
contractors  down  below  wanted  the  contracts.  So  we  promised 
and  muddled  together  and  suppressed  the  truth — and  now  the 
men  are  dying  that  wouldn't  have  had  to  die !" 

A  long  red  ray  of  sunlight,  leaving  Sylvia  beside  it  in  the 
shadow,  crept  into  the  old  hall. 

"That  was  my  job  over  there,"  McGregor  continued:  "to 
keep  things  quiet  about  the  planes.  Other  fellows  kept  them 
quiet  about  other  things — not — not  murderers ;  just  every-day 
men  looking  after  their  contracts." 

He  said :  "I  liked  Andy  the  first  time  I  saw  him :  he  did 
look  like  my  kid.  Every  time  I  saw  him  after  that,  I  liked 
him  better.  Everybody  did:  Evans  and  Innis,  and  the  men 
in  his  company.  He  fought  fair,  and  I  tried  to  fight  him 
fair.  .  .  . 

"But  you  can't  fight  fair  for  a  wrong  cause,"  he  said.  "I 
didn't  know  it  then ;  but  I  knew  it  when  I  got  to  Mirande-la- 


VICTORIOUS  401 

Faloise.  What  could  I  do?" — He  had  taken  his  hands  from 
his  ashen  face  and,  with  his  elbows  on  his  knees,  was  slowly 
beating  his  clenched  fists,  one  against  the  other.  "What  could 
I  do  ?  I  could  see  he  got  the  service-cross,  and  I  did  see  to  it 
— for  something  I  guess  he  didn't  think  anything  about  when 
he  did  it.  But  how  could  that  help  ?  He  was  dead — Andy — 
and  others :  they  were  dying  every  minute.  What  could  I  do  ?" 

Probably  she  did  not  know  what  he  was  saying.  Certainly, 
Tie  scarcely  knew  that  she  was  there. 

"That's  what  made  me  understand:  having  his  friend  tell 
how  he  died  and  knowing  he  was  dead — he  fought  clean  and 
looked  like  my  red-headed  kid.  I  saw,  if  a  game  isn't  right 
to  begin  with,  you  can't  play  it  any  way  but  wrong. — You've 
got  to  play  right  with  God  or  wrong  with  the  devil. — I'd  been 
against  America — against  God.  So  now  I'm  going  to  try  to 
play  God's  game  and  win. — I  had  some  things  unfinished:  I 
let  'em  go.  Half  a  million,  cold:  it  don't  matter.  I  just 
quit." 

He  got  up  and  again  fully  realized  her  presence. 

"I've  come  over  here,"  he  said  more  calmly,  "to  blow  the 
whole  devil's  game.  That's  all  I  can  do  now,  and  I'm  going 
to  get  a  good  newspaper-man  like  Blunston  to  help  me.  That'll 
be  Andy's  real  service-cross." 

Sylvia  turned  to  him,  and  he  saw  her  face.  He  saw  it  and 
read  it 

"Four  he  said.    "You,  too?" 

She  bowed  her  head. 

"You're  married?" 

"No." 

"Then,  in  Heaven's  name,  why  didn't  you  marry  him?" 

She  spoke  without  fear :  "Don't  you  see  ?  I  went  to  work.  I 
had  to  remember  that.  But,  I  was  going  to — after  the  war." 

She  walked  out  into  the  old  back  yard  among  the  length 
ening  shadows  of  the  trees.  Tac  rose  from  an  unobserved 
corner  and  silently  followed  her. 


403  VICTORIOUS 


The  sky  was  crimson ;  the  perfume  of  the  flowers  rose  about 
her  in  an  aura — rose  as  the  perfumes  had  risen  that  evening 
along  Le  Bourget  so  short  a  time  ago.  Almost  physically  she 
felt  Andy's  presence.  He  was  speaking  as  he  had  spoken  then. 
A  mighty  expectancy  was  upon  her;  the  golden  twilight 
pressed  around  her  as  if  it  were  a  bed  of  love  and  peace.  Over 
the  purpling  east  came  a  single  star,  pale  but  clear.  He  had 
loved  her,  and  she  had  loved  him.  In  the  end,  she  had  meant 
to  him  something  even  higher  than  her  love.  Joan,  he  had 
sent  her  word,  had  always  been  with  him :  she  knew  that  in 
this  Joan  of  his  she  had  merely  the  lesser  part,  but  she  knew 
also  that  she  could  yet  so  live  as  to  be  not  wholly  unworthy  of 
that  part  of  his  ideal. 

To  the  ancient  river,  to  the  immortal  sunset  and  the  eternal 
hills,  she  raised  her  arms.  She  opened  wide  her  girl-boy 
hands.  This  was  Andy's  country  and  hers:  it  was  America. 

"I  gave  him  to  you,"  she  said.    "I  gave  him !" 

He  had  died  triumphant  in  the  clear  vision  of  democracy's 
triumph. 

And  in  Andy's  death,  Sylvia  triumphed,  too. 

VI 

Watching  her  from  the  doorway,  McGregor  saw  her  arms 
descend  and  fold  before  her  breast.  Her  attitude  was  that 
of  a  mother  nursing.  .  .  . 

VII 

The  Daily  Spy  printed  the  news  about  Andy,  the  first  boy 
from  its  town  to  win  the  cross,  and  printed  also  the  general's 
words  accompanying  that  decoration : 

"Private  Andrew  McK.  Brown,  Americus,  Pa.  Infantry. 
At  Mirande-la-Faloise  .  .  .  displayed  distinguished  bravery 
in  going  to  the  assistance  of  his  fatally  wounded  captain  and 
carrying  that  officer,  under  heavy  shell-fire,  to  a  field-hospital." 


VICTORIOUS  403 

"I  can't  believe  it,"  a  suddenly  sobered  Minnie  Taylor  con 
fided  to  everybody. — She  was  engaged  to  a  sergeant  at  Camp 
Meade. — "And  just  to  think  it  was  me  sent  Andy  over  there !" 

For  the  generous  little  town  buzzed  with  pride,  and  Andy 
was  become  a  hero,  and  Sarah  the  mother  of  one.  Babe 
Campbell  rang  her  door-bell  and  wiped  his  eyes  with  his 
roughened  knuckles  as  he  told  her  how  he  minded  the  time 
Andy  helped  him  arrest  three  Hungarian  chicken-thieves. 
Kepler  cried;  Lawyer  Dickey  refused  remuneration  for 
straightening  out  the  deeds  to  the  Tidd  house  and  wrote  her 
a  very  much  scrawled  letter  in  Websterian  periods;  Colonel 
Eskessen  sent  a  note  that  said  only  "We're  proud  of  Andy  and 
weep  with  you";  Doctor  Dawson  called,  and  Doctor  Patrick 
asked  if  he  couldn't  prescribe  something,  and  the  girls  of  the 
Eacket  Store  dispatched  two  dozen  American  Beauties,  bought 
in  Doncaster. 

Oddly,  also,  with  the  passing  of  Andy,  there  passed  Sarah's 
social  ostracism.  The  church-people  called,  and  the  Blun- 
ston  girls.  Everybody  that  was  anybody  called  and  hoped  that, 
when  the  proper  time  came,  Sarah  would  return  these  visits. 
Mrs.  Bolingbroke  called  and  cried  and  sincerely  wanted  to  re 
sign  the  chairmanship  of  the  Americus  Chapter  of  the  Eed 
Cross  in  Sarah's  favor.  And,  finally,  a  big  memorial-service 
was  planned  to  be  held  in  the  Opera  House,  at  which  the 
senior  judge  of  the  Doncaster  County  Court  was  to  preside ;  a 
speech  was  to  be  made  by  the  junior  Pennsylvania  senator, 
and  the  Bishop  of  Harrisburg  was  to  pronounce  the  benedic 
tion.  The  Daily  Spy,  at  McGregor's  suggestion,  had  seen  to 
all  this,  and  it  was  then  that  Ralph  Bolingbroke  would  make 
an  announcement :  how  Andy's  mother,  who  had  lent  the  Tidd 
house  to  the  Red  Cross  for  the  duration  of  the  war,  would, 
immediately  thereafter,  give  it  outright  to  the  town  as  a  free 
club  for  returned  soldiers  and  the  young  fellows  of  Americus ; 
how  Mr.  B.  Frank  McGregor  contributed  a  check  for  twenty- 
five  thousand  dollars  toward  its  support,  and  how  Blunston 
and  Ralph  himself  headed  a  list  of  citizens  pledging  substan 
tial  annual  subscriptions  to  the  upkeep  of  this  Andrew  Mc- 
Kinley  Brown  Memorial  Community  Center. 


404  VICTORIOUS 

VIII 

Even  Blunston  began  to  see  that  Andy  had  not  died  in  vain. 
At  first,  Drew,  through  whom  the  boy  had  gone  abroad,  felt 
as  if  it  was  his  hand  that  had  killed  him.  In  spite  of  his  inti 
mate  acquaintance  with  war,  this  death  seemed  only  a  piece  of 
reckless  waste.  He  felt  it  as  one  feels  the  ruin  of  some  deli 
cate  mechanism,  the  irretrievable  destruction  of  a  dead  in 
ventor's  only  model  for  a  useful  device,  the  wanton  slaughter 
of  a  shade-tree.  All  that  buoyant  spirit  had  been  spilled  upon 
the  winds,  that  source  of  cheerful  energy  and  resourcefulness 
scattered,  the  very  soul  of  it  blotted  out.  There  would  be  left 
but  a  day  on  the  calendar,  a  house  with  a  name  above  its  door, 
and  the  brief  memory  of  man. 

Yet  that  mood  did  not  last.  Gradually,  he  recaptured 
Andy's  vision,  saw  that  no  man  died  wastefully  who  gave  his 
life  toward  the  death  of  autocracy,  saw  that  he,  Blunston,  and 
thousands  of  others  would  have  to  fight  insidious  autocracy 
at  home  as  Andy  had  helped  to  fight  the  open  manifestation 
of  it  abroad,  remembered  The  Lesson  of  the  War,  joined  in 
McGregor's  plan  for  an  exposure  of  the  evils  done — and 
studied  the  soul  of  Andy's  mother. 

IX 

And  Sarah? 

Had  she  wondered  how  the  sky  could  be  so  blue  ?  Had  she 
pictured  the  dying  boy  that  sent  her  his  love,  the  baby  that  she 
had  nursed  and  a  German  killed  ? 

Nobody  ever  knew.  What  people  observed  was  only  that  she 
learned  to  say  without  tears  much  that  few  could  have  said 
and  not  broken  down ;  that  she  could  even  talk  calmly  of  that 
distant  day  when  the  bodies  of  America's  fallen  should  come 
home  again  and  aver  that  she  would  let  her  tree  lie  where  it 
had  fallen. 

In  Andy's  death,  she  had  learned  the  kindliness  of  the 
friendly  town  that  she  had  so  long  feared  as  unkindly  and 
hated  as  an  enemy.  He  would  never  have  been  contented  not 
to  do  his  whole  duty,  as  a  man  and  a  citizen;  doing  that,  he 


VICTORIOUS  405 

had  opened  her  eyes.  It  was  the  end  of  her,  but  she  realized 
that  it  was  the  beginning  of  things  infinitely  more  important 
than  was  she.  While  those  things  grew,  Andy  showed  her 
love,  and  love  was  God.  The  Cause  was  not  only  bigger  than 
its  mistakes :  it  was  bigger  than  its  sacrifices. 

One  evening,  when  the  street  was  full  of  working  men  go 
ing  to  their  waiting  homes  after  a  day  of  labor  well  rewarded, 
she  took  away  that  silken  banner  which  Drew  Blunston  had 
given  her.  Prom  Andy's  untouched  attic-room,  from  the  silent 
company  of  the  thumbed  books,  the  now  broken  tennis-racket 
and  the  dusty  dance-programs  strung  across  the  mirror, 
she  brought  his  boyhood  box  of  paints  and  sat  down  to  a  slow 
task.  Then  in  the  front  window  she  rehung  the  service-flag. 

It  bore  a  golden  star.    .   .   . 


On  the  cloud-laden  morning  of  Monday,  the  eleventh  of  No 
vember,  1918,  that  portion  of  the  American  front  along  the 
hills  beyond  Mirande-la-Faloise  was,  until  eleven  o'clock,  as 
active  as  it  had  been  during  every  day  of  the  preceding  week. 
Explosions  tore  the  air.  Great  clouds  of  dust  and  smoke  leaped 
up  from  the  hills  opposite,  where  the  enemy  lay  entrenched. 
The  air  was  thick  with  war  and  death.  The  opposing  lines 
were  within  easy  rifle-range  of  each  other;  to  lift  one's  head 
an  inch  above  a  parapet  was  to  die. 

On  the  stroke  of  the  hour,  however,  there  fell  a  sudden  still 
ness.  To  the  ears  of  the  combatants,  long  inured  to  the 
brazen  din  of  battle,  that  stillness  was  momentarily  more  awe 
some  than  the  fiercest  bombardment. 

Then,  from  the  American  trenches,  there  rose,  at  first  un 
certain,  but  steadily  gaining  force  and  assurance,  a  cheer. 

It  was  faintly  echoed  from  the  farther  hills. 

There  was  a  pause.  Heads  appeared  above  the  American 
parapets — heads  unhelmeted. 

"Upon  the  horizon  silhouettes  leaped  up,  and  tossed  their 
empty  arms  in  the  jubilant  air. 

The  hour  was  the  hour  of  the  signing  of  the  armistice. 
«  The  war  had  ended. 


406  VICTOKIOUS 

XI 

That  evening,  all  along  the  line,  lights  were  visible  from 
the  ruined  villages  for  the  first  time  since  the  summer  of  1914 : 
they  were  the  candles  lighted  by  celebrating  soldiers  and  such 
of  the  inhabitants  as  remained  there.  In  a  broken  window  of 
the  sole  wall  of  the  Inn  of  the  Lilies  that  remained  upstand 
ing,  an  Ameriran  soldier  and  a  tall,  full-bosomed  French  girl 
had  just  ignited  a  single  taper.  The  light  showed  the  Croix 
de  Guerre  on  Chrissly  Shuman's  breast;  in  Leonie's  dusky 
cheeks  it  showed  the  red  rose  of  joy. 

She  seized  his  arm  in  both  her  hands.   Her  flashing  eyes 
were  wet. 
I     "Mais,  je  suis  louleversee"  she  murmured. 

Chrissly  smiled.  "Me,  too,"  he  said.  He  spoke  in  his  un 
accented  French.  "You  must  remember  that  you've  only  been 
back  here  for  half  an  hour,  and  I  don't  know  yet  how  you  got 
away  from  those  Heinies  that  took  you  in  the  fight  here." 

"It  was  very  simple" — Leonie  regarded  him  with  the  clear 
eyes  of  an  animal :  "I  killed  them." 

On  the  whole,  it  seemed  better  to  pass  by  the  details  of 
that.  "And  then?"  asked  Chrissly. 

"Then,  since  I  could  not  find  you  here,  I  went  back  to 
the  other  village  and  the  other  inn — where  we  first  met." 

They  were  leaning  beside  the  gutting  candle  and  looking 
through  the  broken  window.  A  glow  was  visible  from  the 
American  trenches  and,  on  the  dark  sky,  could  be  seen  the 
reflection  of  another  glow  from  trenches  still  more  distant: 
the  trenches  of  those  who,  for  more  than  four  long  years,  had 
been  the  world's  enemies.  Toward  that  reflection  Chrissly 
pointed. 

"It's  Gotterdammerung  "  he  said. 

"That  is  a  Boche  word,"  said  Leonie,  her  dark  brows  con 
tracting.  "What  does  it  mean?" 

"It  means,"  averred  Chrissly — his  interpretation  of  the 
word  was  more  from  the  sound  than  from  his  knowledge  of 
its  sense— "it  means  the  end  of  idols." 

He  slipped  an  arm  about  her  waist  and  drew  her  toward 


VICTORIOUS  407 

him.  Her  brown  eyes,  limpid  and  wondering,  looked  into 
his.  Against  him  her  firm  breasts  panted. 

"It  means  a  new  world,  mon  cher"  she  said.  Her  firm  teeth 
flashed  white  behind  the  red  of  her  parted  lips.  "America 
gives  France  a  new  world — and  you  give  it  to  me,  hein?" 

He  bent  his  face  to  hers. 

"I  guess  we've  won,  somehow:  democracy  and  such  things 
have/'  said  Chrissly. 

Leonie  waved  a  free  hand  toward  a  crimsoned  sky.  "Not 
'somehow.'  I  think  I  can  see  Ste.  Jeanne  up  there ;  I  believe 
well  that  she  has  been  fighting  for  us  always." 

Her  lover  hesitated.  Her  mention  of  the  Maid  had  touched 
his  memory.  "Yes,"  he  said  at  last,  "it's  cost  a  lot,  and  those 
who  wasted  have  got  to  pay — not  only  the  Boche,  but  those 
who  helped  the  Boche  because  they  didn't  help  us."  He  gave 
his  eyes  to  her  again.  "But  it  was  Andy  told  me  when  he 
died — you  remember  Andy  Brown? — 'The  Cause  is  bigger 
than  its  mistakes.'  There's  ruin  everywhere" — he  glanced 
about  the  ruin  of  the  inn — "but  we'll  rebuild." 

Leonie,  with  a  stifled  cry,  drew  his  face  to  hers: 

"We  will  rebuild— together." 


THE  END 


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MAR  10  1921 
OCT  31 


17  1*14 
Ut  17 


50m-7,'16 


YB  33104 


41434 J 


